“My concern is that they will revisit their earlier plans to introduce a punitive tax on advertising revenues, which could easily force the remaining few international owners to sell their media assets and these assets can end up in the hands of government-friendly businessmen,” Szabolcs Panyi, an investigative reporter working for Direkt36, an investigative journalism outlet, told CPJ.
(CPJ emailed RTL Klub’s news director, Róbert Kotroczó for comment but did not receive an immediate reply. Following an international outcry, the advertising tax was set to zero percent – but only until the end of 2022.
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After winning the 2014 election, Orbán introduced a tax that would have stripped RTL Klub, the country’s largest independent commercial TV station and owned by Luxembourg-based international media conglomerate, of over half of its yearly profits. Other remaining free private media outlets could also see their advertising revenue put at risk. (In an answer to CPJ’s questions, the Hungarian Post responded that they are not planning any changes in the distribution of weeklies and other periodicals.) Direkt36 investigative reporter Szabolcs Panyi (Photo credit: Mira Marjanovic) “The state-owned Hungarian Post might stop delivering weeklies just like it did last year with dailies, which would be a serious blow to my business”, he told CPJ. He also fears that distribution of critical newspapers will become even more difficult. Lukács, whose weekly is printed in neighboring Slovakia because Hungarian print houses won’t print it for fear of falling out with the government, told CPJ that he expects advertising in his newspapers to decline as Hungarian companies become more reluctant to place ads in a newspaper critical of the authorities. Magyar Hang was founded by a group of conservative journalists after Magyar Nemzet, the critical right-wing daily newspaper they previously worked for, was shut down following Orbán’s 2018 election win.
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“This landslide victory will just strengthen Orbán’s view that he is on the right track, so conditions for free press will get even worse,” Csaba Lukács, head of independent weekly Magyar Hang, told CPJ. In 2022, the uneven media playing field, along with fears over the war in neighboring Ukraine, an economic downturn and rising prices, helped him to an election landslide – spurring further concerns among independent journalists that Orbán would use his constitutional supermajority to clamp down on the remaining handful of critical outlets. Orbán’s grip on the free press played an important role in his election wins since 2010, with election observers saying that voting was free but unfair in 20. As CPJ has documented, his attacks on press freedom have included the forcible closure or government takeover of once-independent media outlets, his use of the COVID-19 epidemic to further restrict access to information, and verbal attacks, lawsuits, police questioning and even secret surveillance to intimidate journalists. Reporters who talked with CPJ recalled how his threats against the media in a speech before his 2018 election win silenced critical voices and consolidated his power through a vast pro-government media empire and state media that act as a propaganda machine. Orbán has systematically eroded Hungary’s independent media space since taking office. As Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán celebrated his landslide election win on Sunday with jubilant jibes at the European Union’s “bureaucrats in Brussels” and international media, the country’s independent journalists braced themselves for an even harsher media climate during his Fidesz party’s unprecedented fourth consecutive term in office.
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