The rapid erosion of free media in Hungary

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has warned that Hungary faces significant political, economic, and regulatory pressures on its free media. According to RSF’s World Press Freedom Index, Hungary ranks 68th out of 180 countries. When Victor Orbán began his second term, having spent four years in opposition, the country was ranked 23rd. RSF stated, “Thanks to political and economic manoeuvres and the buyout of media outlets by oligarchs with close ties to Fidesz, the ruling party, the latter now controls 80% of the country’s media.

Orbán’s party, in particular, dominates the so-called traditional media. The state media authority MTVA received public funding of around eighty billion forints, approximately €205 million, in the first six months of this year. Many private news portals and regional newspapers are owned by companies associated with Fidesz. The media council, the most important state supervisory body, is staffed by party faithful.

 

Political tensions rise ahead of April elections

Earlier this year, Orbán’s party introduced legislation that would blacklist and fine critical media outlets and think tanks that receive funding or grants from abroad.

Media analyst Gabor Polyak, a University professor and media researcher, anticipates that the discourse will become even more acrimonious in the run-up to the April election. “It’s going to be a very loud, aggressive, and brutal time,” he predicts.

Orbán took a selfie with the author of a far-right blog that repeatedly refers to the opposition leader Peter Magyar as a “bug.” Magyar’s Tisza party has been ahead in the polls for several months now, which indicates that it stands a good chance of winning the parliamentary election next April.  

 

It is heating up – Media restrictions and political advertising

In the last months, there have been further restrictions on Hungarian independent media. Swiss media Ringier said it sold its Hungarian media division to a company close to Prime Minister Viktor Orban‘s ruling party. Indamedia Network owns 18 online publications and major traditional media, including Index, Hungary’s most-read tabloid. The sale comes at a critical time, just months before Hungarian national elections, when Orban faces a rare challenge to his 15-year rule.

A study by the Budapest think tank Political Capital reveals that between January and August 2025, Hungary spent around €5.6m on political advertisements on Facebook alone, of which 85% was spent on behalf of the government.

In 2020, Miklos Vaszily, who owns 50% of Indamedia and is the CEO of government-friendly TVT2, presented a plan to restructure the editorial office of Index, the most widely read news portal in Hungary. When journalists resisted, the editor-in-chief, Szabolcs Dull, was dismissed, after which the entire editorial staff resigned in solidarity.

With a new editorial team, Index has since published several critical reports about opposition figures, primarily based on anonymous sources or disputed documents. Vaszily also recently joined one of the digital platforms Orban created earlier this year as he steps up his political campaign.

One of those targeted by Index, opposition leader Peter Magyar, has condemned the deal between Ringier and Indamedia, accusing Orban’s Fidesz of taking control of Hungary’s outlets. “Orban and his allies are so terrified of losing the election, they are no longer even trying to keep up appearances,” he wrote on Facebook.

 

Hungary’s independent media faces another major setback.

In another blow to independent media, Kari Lake, Trump advisor and CEO of the US Agency for Global Media, USAGM, announced before Viktor Orbán’s November trip to the US that they will no longer fund the Hungarian-language service of Radio Free Europe (RFE/RL), i.e. Free Europe Hungary. RFE/RL first operated in Hungary from 1950 to 1993, offering news from a Western perspective during the Soviet era, and was relaunched in 2014 due to concerns about Orbán’s tightening control over the media.

The decision by USAGM closed the Hungarian office of Free Europe overnight, and the staff did not even have time to say goodbye to their audience. The team called Elemző, meaning analysis, met onPartizan, an independent video site on YouTube.

Rita Benyó, Zoltán Lakner, Anna Unger and Bálint Ruff thanked their viewers live, talking about what this decision meant for the independent Hungarian press, and analysed the state of the country four months before the April elections (Hungarian only).

They consider the elections a vital decision for people to show that, after 15 years of Orbán rule, they want the right to decide the future of their country freely. Whoever wins, the people will be more united, making a better-functioning Hungary possible through negotiations and less hate and division.

An article on DW reports that Hungarians were shocked last week to learn that the chief of police in the southern city of Hodmezövásárhely had taken his own life. In the preceding days, he had been the target of personal attacks in a pro-government local newspaper after permitting a rally critical of the governing Fidesz party.

“For a long time now, we’ve seen public discourse becoming increasingly aggressive,” says Gabor Polyak, a professor of media law and policy at Eötvös Lorand University in Budapest. “Politicians are constantly painting someone as the enemy, dehumanising groups, and flooding the public realm with propagandistic messages, which the taxpayer funds.”

 

Artists fight back against hate.

In November, to protest against hate speech and incitement in public, at least 50,000 people responded to a call for a non-partisan demonstration. Loupe, a theatre performance troupe, called for the protest under the slogan “Air! Stand up for free public spaces and clean public discourse.”

There were speeches from creative artists, including the comedian and YouTuber Edina Pottyondy. She warned that the Hungarian government was using “the neurotoxin of propaganda” to control public debate.

The actor Tamas Lengyel, one of Loupe’s co-founders, explained that country-wide government posters prompted the demonstration. For more than a decade, they have incited hatred against a series of different hate figures, from refugees, Hungarian-born George Soros, to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Billions of Forints (Hungarian currency) of taxpayers’ money are being spent on disinformation and propaganda, Lengyel told DW. “We had the idea of doing something to counter these posters.”

So far, their protest activities have resulted in a petition with more than 200,000 signatures and an initiative promoting a referendum to ban hate speech in the public sphere. Lengyel and his fellow campaigners are waiting for a response from the Hungarian electoral commission.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban had issued a warning about the supposed ‘enemies of Hungary’ on the day before the protest. At an unofficial election campaign event, he spoke of parties, NGOs, and media organisations that were supposedly “just waiting to implement instructions from Brussels.” According to him, they were responsible for acts of aggression and smear campaigns against “Christian and nationalist artists, media, and parties.”

In a worrying statement by Orbán and the Russian secret service, the opposition is accused of being financed by the EU. That is their excuse for supporting the current government.

 

EU on media freedom and democracy

The EU recently introduced a new law, the European Media Freedom Act, but it relies on member states to implement it. As expected, the Hungarian government has already challenged the law before the European Court of Justice.

 

Threats to UK media freedom

The UK is also facing challenges to its media freedom by certain groups led by politicians who align more with foreign autocrats than our government. Foreign-based billionaires own some popular media. Trump’s demand for compensation from the BBC over an unfortunate edit comes amid accusations of media bias by Mr Farage. Other groups have also accused the state broadcaster of giving right-wing groups in general and Mr Farage in particular disproportionate airtime. Several BBC staff appointments during the Conservative government seemed to favour party faithful.

The UK must learn from Hungary’s example and ensure the sanctity of a free media is protected.

 

by Magdalena Williams