Growing fears over state role in Hungarian media
Allegations of government interference as journalists resign en masse in protest over Index editor’s sacking
CONCERNS over the independence of the media in Hungary have been reignited after dozens of journalists from one of the country’s last independent news sites quit en masse, alleging the government was trying to interfere with, or destroy, their organisation.
In total, 70 journalists resigned from Index after Szabolcs Dull, its editor, was sacked. Officially, he was removed for failing to deal with issues in the newsroom. But the editor’s supporters said the sacking was “clear interference” and an attempt to pressure the news site to toe a pro-government line.
Fears over the future of Index were ignited in March when Miklos Vaszily, a businessman who backs the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, bought a 50 per cent stake in the firm that controls Index’s advertising and revenue. Although Mr Vaszily denies wanting to exert editorial influence, critics claim that he helped transform Origo, another Hungarian website, into a pro-government organisation.
Once news of the mass resignation from Index broke, protesters took to the streets in Budapest on Friday evening. Addressing demonstrators, András Fekete-Győr, leader of Momentum, an opposition party, said the “journalists of Index had demonstrated the value of having a moral backbone in this country”.
However, Mr Orbán and his party have a strong position in the Hungarian parliament, and in the past have proved impervious to accusations that they are undermining Hungarian democracy. The Hungarian government has also always denied that it poses a threat to the country’s free media.
Marianna Bíró, a journalist at Index, told The Sunday Telegraph: “Today, the political power in Hungary denies... does not recognise the function of journalists. The media only has one weapon left in this massacre: decency.”
Balázs Pándi, another employee who walked out, said: “This isn’t the first time a cold shower has been deployed. The question is how long this will be tolerated.”
Index has become regarded as a bastion of independent journalism in a Hungarian media landscape increasingly dominated by print and broadcast media with close ties to Fidesz, Mr Orbán’s governing party. The hollowing out of independent media inside Hungary comes amid a push to spread Mr Orbán’s message abroad, uncovered today by The Sunday Telegraph.
An investigation found a slew of English-language websites promoting the message and illiberal philosophy of Mr Orbán, raising fears that Hungary is following in the “disinformation” footsteps of authoritarian governments.
Alleged propaganda websites, with connections to the government, masquerade as legitimate news sources, purporting to bring Hungarian and regional news to an international audience. Remix News, one of the websites in question, is often linked to the About Hungary Facebook page, run by the Hungarian state.
Based in Budapest, it is, according to its own information, an organisation offering “news and commentary from Central Europe”. But to critics it is one of a number of websites with opaque backgrounds allegedly spreading propaganda supporting the government beyond Hungary’s borders while posing as legitimate news sources.
“Hungary has become a regional disinformation power, and is expanding its own misinformation machinery,” said Szabolcs Panyi, a journalist for Direkt36, an investigative journalism centre in Budapest. “I’m not aware of a similar country doing this apart from the likes of Russia and China.”
A quick click away from Remix is V4NA. A UK-registered company founded in 2018 by Hungary’s then ambassador to London, it turns out stories each day, many of which share a similar theme to those on Remix. Articles attacking migration, the EU and George Soros, the Hungarian-born financier whom the Orbán government regards as an enemy of state, proliferate.
The stories reflect issues close to the heart of the Hungarian government.
Since coming into power in 2010, Mr Orbán’s Fidesz party has become a resolute opponent of migration, a fierce critic of Brussels and Mr Soros, and a proponent of what the prime minister has termed “illiberal democracy”.
This has led to frequent clashes with Brussels and prompted allegations that the Hungarian government is intent on eroding democratic norms and civil society in order to shape the country to its ideological designs – something it strenuously denies.
“Orbán needs international allies in his fight against the EU,” said Agnes Urbán, a media analyst at Mertek Media Monitor, a Hungarian media watchdog.
Barna Borbás, a Hungarian journalist who has written extensively about V4NA for the conservative newspaper Valasz Online, believes V4NA’s “goal is to make the messages and strategic goals of the Hungarian government more visible in Europe”.
This is perhaps not surprising given that Arpád Habony, one of Mr Orbán’s key advisors and a man sometimes called the “Hungarian Dominic Cummings”, has a share in V4NA, while V4NA’s parent company is part of the Central European Press and Media Foundation, a media-holding containing a number of pro-government newspapers and radio stations in Hungary. V4NA failed to respond to an interview request from The Telegraph.
Remix is owned by FWD Affairs, a “strategic communications and media agency” in Budapest, founded in 2010 by Patrick Egan, an American political consultant. In the past, FWD Affairs has carried out work for the prime minister’s office.
FWD made no response to attempts by The Telegraph to contact it.
‘Today, the political power in Hungary... does not recognise the function of journalists. The media has only one weapon left: decency’