By Jacob Mchangama
Three days after securing a landslide victory in Hungary’s parliamentary election, incoming prime minister Peter Magyar appeared on the country’s state broadcaster for the first time in 18 months and labeled it a “factory of lies” peddling “propaganda” worthy of North Korea and Goebbels.
Magyar’s hostility reflects the well-documented media capture that outgoing prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party entrenched for 16 years after returning to power in 2010. Through a combination of restrictive laws, partisan enforcement, and hostile takeovers, some 80% of Hungary’s traditional media was Orbán-aligned, hoovering up an estimated 90% of state advertising revenue. In addition, the government passed laws meant to shut down or intimidate academic institutions and civil society organizations shining a critical light on the illiberal and kleptocratic tendencies of Orbán’s Hungary.
So how did Magyar and his Tisza party manage to create a political movement winning a two-thirds majority in Parliament with a media environment so heavily stacked against opposition voices? Well, it’s the internet, Stupid! Although Magyar had a very strong ground game, visiting several villages every single day, the internet was a huge factor in his campaign.
With all print and broadcast media serving as Fidesz mouthpieces, Hungarian journalists, civil society organizations, and opposition politicians heavily relied on the internet. Small and nimble online media outlets persisted with independent reporting, documenting government scandals, using social media to provide an alternative news diet to ordinary Hungarians used to being force-fed government propaganda.
A pivotal moment happened on Feb. 2, 2024, when 444.hu broke the story of how Hungary’s president, Katalin Novák, had pardoned a person convicted for covering up child-sex abuse at a government-run children’s foster home. Investigative media outlet Direkt36 and Telex.hu dug deeper and exposed how a prominent religious leader and “spiritual mentor” to Orbán had played a prominent role in securing the pardon.
Read More
Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is also a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).