media

There are mornings when you wake up to a war zone before you have even had your coffee. Not a front line in the physical sense, but on the screen in the palm of your hand: war, climate catastrophe, another scandal, another \"ultimate truth\" about who the enemy is, who to hate today. The news feed tells us that the world is burning, and at the same time, we should not even think about what to do about it.

In Hungary, FIDESZ-KDNP has been ruling the country with a two-thirds constitutional majority since 2010, now for 15 years. Under Orbán’s regime, there is a particular focus on the country’s media landscape and the crisis of its credibility. It is no exaggeration to state that the public media is effectively under political control and has lost its legitimacy.

Hungary is a beautiful country: homogeneous, democratic, united, and Christian. These facts are so obviously true that I do not even have to provide sources. My country also has an excellent educational system, which teaches journalists working in the booming and free media sector that sarcasm is not a good linguistic tool to use in an article. Why should I do otherwise?

Populist parties raise important questions but offer terrible answers, a weakness others should exploit. Populism is by no means a new phenomenon, but recent years have seen a clear rise in parties turning to a more authoritarian, populist strategy of winning over voters. Now, the populist movement has managed to establish a strong position in Europe, and although its popularity is not currently rising, it is not diminishing either.

For most of us, it becomes a frequent, increasingly common, everyday experience that causes anxiety, tension, or simply a bad feeling when a politically charged public topic is discussed during a conversation. We can also say that this phenomenon has become an integral part of Hungarian reality. In most cases, this sentiment is triggered by the fact that we find it increasingly difficult to contrast our opinions or narratives with other points of view.

In the past years, illiberal political regimes emerged in Poland and Hungary. One of the victims to these regimes are media. Freedom and independence of media in those countries are now under pressure from various angles, such as legal regulations and outright political pressure. The joint research of Project: Polska (PL) and 21 Research Centre (HU) is focused on small, rural media outlets and rural society in general.

During the second decade of the 21st century, liberalization of the media has been significant. By liberalization I don’t mean that liberal voices are more popular than ever, quite the opposite. In Hungary you don’t have to be a hired journalist anymore in order to spread your ideas and opinions on the internet. With the help of social media all you have to do is download the app, sign up and your journey as a political influencer can begin.

The role of the media is more important in politics than it was 20-30 years ago. Political parties and politicians are using the media all around the world to promote themselves, their ideology, and their aims. These actions made media post objective, which means that almost every media outlet is close to a political party, which, of course, doesn’t mean that they’re making propaganda.

Leszek Jażdżewski talks to Olha Konsevych, a Ukrainian journalist and researcher, the Editor-in-Chief of the Ukrainian newspaltform 24tv.ua, about the war in Ukraine.

Reading news in Hungary is an arduous task. If you speak the language and open your browser to learn about current affairs, you’d be hit by a dystopian reality. Only a handful of independent online outlets exist, and the situation is worse in the print media or in places outside of the capital, Budapest.