“I used to believe the media is above power, but it has become clear to me that this is not the case,” said Dominik Varga. Varga, whose name was changed to ensure his personal safety, is a veteran radio host in the Western Hungarian town of Győr.
Varga, like many Hungarian journalists, works for a government-funded municipal media group which is primarily responsible for city and provincial-level reporting. In Győr, the city council is dominated by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s FIDESZ party. Over the past decade, the administration transformed municipal media into the party’s private mouthpiece, and Varga had no choice but to take part.
“We regularly receive finished articles from city hall that we are obliged to publish. There is no opportunity for us to alter them in any way. On the radio, we enjoy a little bit more freedom, but here, too, our news reports are distorted,” Varga said, “We are only allowed to communicate stories that serve those who are currently in power. Nothing about the opposition, or only information that criticizes them.”
Varga still remembers the days of 1989. After decades of Soviet domination, Hungary was declared a republic, with freedom of speech and protection of the free press firmly enshrined in the nation’s constitution. “A completely new world unfolded in front of us” and “the media was reborn,” Varga said. Fresh out of high school and captured by the “magic” of a new democratic epoch, Varga decided journalism was his calling.
Today, three and a half decades later, he says, “there is no press freedom in Hungary.”
Hungary is often described by scholars as an illiberal democracy. The term refers to nations where elections take place in the context of backsliding democratic rights and systems. As Fareed Zakaria (YC ‘86 and former Editor-in-Chief of The Politic) put it, elections in illiberal democracies “are free, but also profoundly unfair.”
Magyars regularly head to the polls, yet one man, Viktor Orbán, has remained Prime Minister for the past 14 years. Hungary is no regional superpower—its population barely scrapes 9.5 million. But the country is a member of both NATO and the EU, where Orbán has often single-handedly obstructed funding to Ukraine and has been widely criticized for his close relations with autocrats and alleged embezzlement of EU funds. Orbán’s ability to stay at the top of Hungarian politics is no accident. Since taking office in 2010, he has packed courts with sympathizers and altered the electoral system in favor of his party, FIDESZ. The most important implement in his anti-democratic toolkit, however, has been the complete subjugation of Hungarian media.
Since taking power, the Orbán government has engaged in a war of takeovers across the private sector, building a government-friendly media empire that spans the entire country.
In 2016, Hungary’s oldest daily newspaper, Népszabadság, stopped publishing after an Orbán-linked oligarch acquired it and 16 other provincial papers. In 2018, a group of FIDESZ-friendly media owners simultaneously donated their outlets to the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA), consolidating 500 national and local news services under the umbrella of government control. Orbán designated the deal a matter of “national strategic importance,” allowing KESMA to circumvent antitrust investigation by the Hungarian Competition Authority.
“Those in power have realized that if they seize control of the press, they kill many flies with one hit. Accountability ceases. There remains nobody who can write unfavorable stories, nobody to hold the government to account,” Varga said.
In the run up to the 2022 elections, Hungary saw the “first serious” political challenger to Orbán emerge. Péter Márki-Zay, a mayor from the Southeastern city of Hódmezővásárhely, united the six largest opposition parties in an alliance against FIDESZ. Over the course of his campaign, state-television gave Márki-Zay a mere five-minute interview.
“No opposition force can gain strength, because they can’t reach the people…They are not on TV, they are not in newspapers, you can’t hear them on the radio. Their agenda simply does not reach the people,” Varga said.
Márki-Zay’s challenge to Orbán collapsed after his coalition won only 57 of the 199 seats in parliament. Orbán and his FIDESZ party won 135.
I asked Varga what would happen to him if he went against the instructions of his editors, commandeering his radio show to critique Győr’s city hall or the national government. He responded without hesitation: “I would be fired instantly. It is also highly likely that I would not find a job anywhere else. FIDESZ controls a very, very large part of the media.”
In Hungary, the provision of radio frequencies, along with the regulation of the media landscape as a whole, falls under the purview of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH), established in 2010 as part of the freshly victorious FIDESZ party’s raft of new media laws.
Among other controversial decisions, in 2021, the NMHH Media Council made global headlines for its decision to revoke the broadcast license of Klubrádió, Hungary’s last major independent radio station.
The official line from the regulator is that Klubrádió’s administrative errors in submitting an “incorrect tender” resulted in their frequency rights being revoked. However, critics including the European Commission argue that rules were applied “in a disproportionate and discriminatory manner.” Klubrádió’s appeal to the Hungarian Supreme Court was ultimately struck down.
The President of the NMHH is a man by the name of Dr. András Koltay. Koltay, who also serves as the head of the NMHH’s “Media Council,” its five-member decision making body, was nominated for the NMHH presidency by Orbán. When I pressed Koltay on the impartiality of his organization, he explained the legal provisions governing the selection of the NMHH leadership.
“The President and members of the Media Council are confirmed by the Parliament. If we look at it from a formal legal perspective, we could not have a stronger authority than this,” Koltay said, “Of course, those who don’t accept this say that FIDESZ has a decisive majority in the Parliament and candidates are not confirmed through a full consensus. I don’t know if there is any parliament in the world where decisions are made with complete consensus. Other than China or North Korea.”
Responding to allegations regarding the politicization of the NMHH, Koltay responded firmly. “I have never received phone calls from politicians, they don’t come here, I don’t go to them,” he said. Meanwhile, on the Klubrádió ruling, the Hungarian Government has been referred to the Court of Justice of the EU for breaching the union’s communications laws.
Though the NMHH’s actions may abide by specific administrative regulations, observers question whether the authority is living up to the spirit of its mandate. The NMHH’s mission statement includes preserving “democratic publicity in the media” and “freedom of the press.”
When speaking with Koltay, I cited multiple examples of journalists I spoke to being forced to publish stories or threatened by editors with termination. “This is not a matter related to the NMHH,” Koltay responded, “If this journalist came to us, there would be nothing we could do. These are disagreements within media organizations.”
Koltay did note protections within Hungarian law which prevent editors from threatening journalists, but he questioned its alleged underutilization. “I do not know of anyone who has used this rule over the last 14 years…One would expect journalists to stand up in defense of their rights,” he said.
Varga serves as proof for why resisting the system is so difficult. As a dad raising two young children, permanently losing his job in the Hungarian radio is a risk too big to take.
The pursuit of truth in a Hungary ruled by Viktor Orbán often pushes journalists to make an impossible tradeoff: integrity or survival.
I asked Varga whether he believes maintaining one’s job and preserving journalistic ethics are mutually exclusive in Hungary. He hesitated before responding, “There is a Hungarian saying: your mouth doesn’t open, your head doesn’t hurt. As a journalist, if you want to go to bed at night with your heart at ease, the only road you have is to stay apolitical.” When given editorial discretion, Varga steers his radio show away from anything related to politics.
In this landscape, journalists who chase after government corruption and abuse of power are few and far between.
András Pethő, Editor-in-Chief of Direkt36, a non-profit investigative journalism center, is one of them. Pethő, a Harvard Niemann Fellow, co-founded Direkt36 after spending 10 years at Origo, one of Hungary’s most-read online papers. He left after Origo’s owner, Magyar Telekom, came under the influence of Orbán’s Chief of Staff in a back-channel quid pro quo. In exchange for license renewal and a lucrative broadband installation contract, Magyar Telekom was to expunge journalism critical of the government.
“It became clear that the circumstances were not there anymore to conduct independent journalism,” Pethő said. At the time of the deal, Pethő was working on an article exposing a misuse of government funds by Orbán’s Chief of Staff. Upper management demanded the article be taken down. “When we pushed back with my colleagues, the editorial chief was forced out of his job. I resigned,” Pethő said. 30 other colleagues walked out with him. Origo was eventually sold to the son of György Matolcsy, the Governor of the Hungarian Central Bank, and later donated to the KESMA media empire.
Péter Szigeti, the Director of 24.hu, the most widely accessed independent news outlet in Hungary, breaks down Hungary’s media landscape into three categories: public service, commercial, and provincial. 24.hu belongs to the commercial group, and unlike Origo, it is one of the few in this category that managed to stay free from Orbán’s mass accretion of media outlets.
Szigeti attributes 24.hu’s success in avoiding a takeover to the organization’s self-reliance. “Céntral Media (the owner of 24.hu) is a profitable company. We can make a living on the market,” Szigeti said.
Many smaller outlets can not achieve the same. The largest domestic advertiser in Hungary is the government, a position they exploit to financially strangle dissident outlets. A study by independent media watchdog Mérték estimates 90% of state advertisements are distributed to FIDESZ-friendly organizations. Even though 24.hu reaches 75% of Hungarian internet users, “we receive nothing,” Szigeti said.
During our interview, Szigeti took a pause and smiled at his clock. “Actually, the time window is just starting,” he said, “At the moment, it is 3:30pm on Friday. At around 4pm, when they believe our lawyers are beginning to head home, [the lawsuits] arrive.” The timing is no accident; 24.hu has five days to respond to government lawsuits, and two valuable days will be lost during the weekend. Szigeti continued, “They use public funds to hire expensive lawyers and law firms to sue for everything in the name of those in power.” 24.hu’s legal team, meanwhile, is a handful of law school seniors. The outlet has not lost a single case this year.
While Szigeti takes a lighthearted approach to the barrage of lawsuits that hit 24.hu each week, other papers may not have this opportunity for levity. In 2021, Direkt36 was embroiled in a scandal that struck at the very heart of Hungarian power. After being contacted by a French investigative outlet, it was revealed that two Direkt36 journalists were surveilled by the Hungarian security services using Pegasus, an Israeli-made anti-terror spyware. Pegasus—the maker of which is blacklisted by the U.S. Government—has the ability to access messages, harvest photos, and activate a device’s camera and microphone undetected. “I wasn’t surprised, let’s put it this way,” Pethő said, “But, I was still shocked that they deployed a military grade…cyber weapon against journalists who were just doing their job and reporting on stories that were clearly in the public interest. They did this in a country that is….still supposed to be a democracy.”
The government does everything they can to prevent 24.hu from doing their job. “Instead of putting journalists in prison, they don’t speak to them,” Szigeti said, “It makes our work a lot more difficult. What happens is you send a question to a government ministry, and they simply don’t respond. They also make accessing public information remarkably difficult.” In a bid to burden private news outlets, the Hungarian government has begun charging for access to normally free public data such as company registrations or land ownership records.
However, according to Szigeti, “The biggest problem for the Hungarian media market and democracy is not that the government interferes with our operations. The real big problem is that classical public broadcasters have been destroyed.”
In the leadup to the recent U.S. Presidential Election, Hungarian state television showed no restraint in taking sides. In a report introducing the two candidates, each was described with three phrases which flashed up on the screen. President-elect Trump—a close ally of Orbán—was assigned “protective tariffs, peace, border security.” Vice President Harris was assigned “climate crisis, war, abortion.”
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In the face of heavily distorted journalism, the Hungarian regulator appears paralyzed in its approach. “It is concerning and problematic from many perspectives, but at the same time, this can’t be dealt with through legal means. I think this is an issue of journalistic ethics and societal culture,” Koltay said, “A media authority is not equipped to take over the role of the editors. This would be serious interference with the freedom of a media outlet.”
Referencing media magnate and majority owner of Fox Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, Koltay said that “at the end of the day, the word of the owner decides what happens in an organization…You could call this unpleasant or immoral, but nobody disputes that this is within [Murdoch’s] rights. This is part of press freedom too.”
Institutional biases are inevitable, but as Szigeti pointed out, journalistic independence does not absolve journalistic malpractice. “In a story, you listen to every impacted party and separate news from opinion. These are basic rules,” he said. Prior to the 2022 Hungarian elections, newspapers, radio, and television stations across the country broadcast that Márki-Zay would send Hungarians to fight in Ukraine if he won the election. Márki-Zay never made such a claim.
“The fact that any political force can be the owner of a media group is a very big problem,” Varga said.
Pethő says the question of whether there is freedom of the press in Hungary is difficult. “I think another way of asking this is whether the press is able to fulfill its democratic function,” he said, “I have more doubts about that.”
Koltay goes as far as saying that “the people aren’t really interested anymore in whether there can be unbiased news broadcasts.” But, as Dominik Varga still believes, “press freedom has to be the foundational pillar of democracy.”
Looking to the future, Koltay, Szigeti, and Varga all agree that the prospect for change is small. “We Hungarians are generally pessimists,” Koltay laughed, “You need well-trained journalists with their heart in the right place. You need a market which is large enough to sustain itself. You need self-conscious consumers who are willing to pay to support the media…The conditions are missing.”
“I don’t have any illusions,” Szigeti said, “If one day someone else is in power in Hungary, I don’t think they would release this [the public broadcasters] from their grip.”
“The chance of [change] is very small,” Varga agreed. Referencing the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, “Only the people can initiate this change,” he said, “If the Hungarian people throw their hands on the table and say, that’s enough, we want an independent media…then maybe the free press could come back to Hungary.”
In spite of this outlook, Direkt36 and 24.hu continue their missions.
“Last year, we did a story on hospital-acquired infections, and it resonated really, really widely. We even saw some changes announced by the government,” Pethő recounted.
At 24.hu, reporters are coming up with creative ways to access information. “If they don’t give you the details on what type of estate the Prime Minister is building, then you realize you can go there yourself and take photos with a drone,” Szigeti said, “You stand at a specific spot from morning to night waiting for [your subject].”
These tactics have come to define the new style of reporting in Hungary. “I still remember the times when it was not like this,” Szigeti said, “but [the younger generation] don’t…They have learned to adapt.”
The work of brave, seasoned journalists like Szigeti, Pethő, and Varga and hundreds of intrepid, young Hungarians keep the embers of democratic hope alive. Embers, centuries of Hungarian history prove, can flare into light.
Interviews with Varga, Koltay, and Szigeti were conducted in Hungarian and translated to English.