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HUNGARY
The Constitution provides for freedom of speech and of
the press, and the Government respects this right in
practice. All the major print media—national
and regional newspapers, magazines, and tabloids—are
in private hands, some as part of foreign media
companies. The print media enjoy considerable
freedom; however, journalists and opposition politicians
are concerned that the expression of different views in
the press may be circumscribed by the small number of
owners who control most of the print media.
Parliament
passed a media law in 1995 creating institutions designed
to foster a free and independent electronic media.
The law provided for the creation of nationwide
commercial television and radio and insulated the
remaining public service media from government
control. In June the Government awarded licenses
for the new privatized television channels that began
broadcasting in October; licenses for commercial radio
were awarded in November, and the stations are expected
to begin broadcasting in early 1999.
The regulatory
body created by the 1995 law, the National Television and
Radio Board (ORTT), was accused during its first year and
a half of operation of political bias in awarding
television licenses. Others have criticized ORTT
for its attempts to acquire a share of the National
Broadcasting Company, thereby becoming an owner in the
industry it regulates. Two lawsuits have been filed
against the Board, in both cases raising the question of
whether the Board truly is insulated from politics and
conflicts of interest as intended by the law.
Academic
freedom is generally respected.
Commentary
It is unbelievable that the report for 1998 is the same
as that of 1997, and there are some inaccuracies about
the 1997 report as well. The licenses for private
television channels of course were not awarded by the
government, but by the ORTT. Although there are
some worries about the small number of owners, these
worries are limited because all the serious experts agree
that the concentration in Hungary is not higher than in
other European countries, and bigger owners are needed
for having independent and strong press. A major
concern regarding ownership, however, is that a partly
state-owned bank, Postabank (Postbank), was one of the
biggest publisher, and the leader of the bank supported
different papers partly from public money as gestures
towards different political-intellectual groups.
The press
holding of Postabank became an even much bigger problem
in 1998 when the new right-wing government nationalized
Postabank, which consumed a lot of money and had to be
supported with huge amount from the national budget from
time to time. Even before the nationalization the
government made the bank stop financing some
papers. Although it is right that the State should
not run newspapers, the bank’s decisions were
selective. While the bank stopped supporting some
papers, it continues to support others. The liberal
weekly, Magyar Narancs (Hungarian Orange)—which is
the only serious paper founded by young people during the
democratic transition in 1989—had to keep itself
alive from day to day. Luckily, until now the
editors could manage to work without salary for a long
period of time while the small children of some of these
editors are staying at home. However, the leftist
liberal daily Kurir could not work longer in the same
situation. At the same time, a so-called
conservative paper, Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation), is
running longer under the ownership of the currently
completely state-owned Postabank. This procedure
shows that the new right-wing government does not really
respect the freedom of the press. The Prime
Minister himself announced that a new balance is needed
in the press—and in cultural life—and the
government can use positive discrimination to achieve
that point. And negative discrimination, we can
add.
The statement
that the media law “insulated the remaining public
service media from government control” was more or
less true for 1997, but the party-nominated members of
the supervisory boards created an institutionalized
multiparty control with some informal governmental
influence. On top of that, the government always
tried to find “small gates” to avoid financing
the public broadcasters automatically, based on law
provisions that insulate the government from budget
support of the public media. The bad supervisory
structure has harmful but not tragic effect on MR
(Hungarian Radio) and DTV (Danube Television, which
provides programmes firstly for the Hungarian minorities
in the neighbouring countries). But MTV (Hungarian
Television) was in a deep crisis before the unpleasant
boards started to work, and its crisis is hardly
deepening by the mistaken structure. MTV could get
even worse in 1998 when the new right-wing government
started its media-balancing policy. By obviously
cooperating with a small extreme-right opposition party,
the governing parties, in the beginning of 1999, created,
only from their nominees, a supervisory board for MTV
after keeping the station in a long uncertain, pending
situation in the second half of 1998. (See my
article, MTV in Hungary, in Issue 50 of this Newsletter.)
The good news
for freedom of the press is that 1998 was the year when
the two national private television channels finally got
more shares of the audience than the suffering MTV.
Perhaps this will give a chance for MTV to have less
political pressure and more effective management to
create a serious, financially accountable public
television under the new, competitive
circumstances. But that change would probably need
some amendments to the law, thus providing a new
supervisory structure and a new regulation of the
procedure of the Complaints Commission of ORTT, which is
sometimes a sword against the freedom of the press.
These amendments should be based on liberal ideas for
independence of the media, which was only a lonely point
of the liberal party SZDSZ (Federation of Free Democrats)
in basic questions when the law was first created.
Péter Molnár
Former Member of Parliament
Associate Professor, ELTE University Media Center
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