Hungarian Media Monitor

PM taps right-wing media lawyer to head Media Authority

August 16, 2013
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Hungarian Media Monitor

Leaders from across the political spectrum have denounced Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s nominee for president of Hungary’s Media Authority as a  loyal puppet controlled by the ruling Fidesz party and its inner circle of media and business oligarchs. Orbán on Wednesday nominated right-wing media lawyer Monika Karas to serve as successor of recently deceased Annamária Szalai as head of Hungary’s Media Authority (NHMM). Karas has served as legal counsel for Government-linked media outlets Lánchíd Rádió, Magyar Nemzet, and HirTV, and for numerous Fidesz officials, including the Prime Minister’s chief adviser Árpád Habony. From 1993 to 2002, Karas represented Magyar Fórum Kiadó, a publisher which was at the time owned by far-right politician and anti-Semitic writer István Csurka.

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Fidesz-linked firm buys national economic daily

August 13, 2013
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Hungarian Media Monitor

Fidesz-linked think tank Századvég's Gazdaszágkutató Zrt. (Century Economic Research Inc.) announced this week it has purchased Napi Gazdaság, a top national business and economic daily. Századvég is part of a consortium of companies have been awarded HUF 4.7 billion (EUR 15 million) in state consultancy contracts by the Ministry of National Development (MND) since 2011, HVG reports. The consortium serves as the primary political and economic advisory group to the government and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

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Hungary's top two TV stations oppose new ad tax

May 29, 2013
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Hungarian Media Monitor

RTL Klub and TV2, Hungary's largest national private TV stations, are protesting a government decision to tax media companies according to their net annual advertising revenues, according to a May 28 article in portfolio.hu. An announcement from RTL Klub reportedly called the measure “unprecedented in Europe,” and added that the company might leave Hungary over the tax. The graded tax, announced a few days earlier, would hit the major broadcasters hardest. The tax is reportedly part of the government’s effort to make sure the country can exit the EU’s excessive debt procedure.

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Átlátszó fights to expose public media spending

May 22, 2013
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Hungarian Media Monitor

Amid steady budget increases and cuts to public media staff, Hungary’s public media management fund, the MTVA, has been outsourcing production to private firms with close ties to Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, according to an ongoing investigation by pro-transparency investigative reporting NGO, Átlátszó. The group, which has been working to uncover the MTVA’s spendings since 2011, has published a series of reports based primarily on leaked documents that detail the MTVA’s outside contracts with Government-linked private companies and individuals to produce programs for Hungary’s public media.

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Media Council issues first fine on a print daily

May 22, 2013
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Hungarian Media Monitor

By Judit Barta

Hungary's Media Council on May 8 handed down its first sanction against a print and online publication with a HUF 250,000 (EUR 862) fine for hate speech against right-wing daily Magyar Hírlap for publishing Zsolt Bayer’s January 5 opinion piece, in which he called Roma “animals” who “shouldn’t be allowed to exist.”

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