HUNGARY: A small group of Hungarian television editors is on hunger strike to protest what they say is widespread news manipulation by the government

Record ID: 340591

  • Title: HUNGARY: A small group of Hungarian television editors is on hunger strike to protest what they say is widespread news manipulation by the government
  • Date: 26th December 2011
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Hungarian) MTVA SPOKESMAN, LASZLO SZABO, SAYING: "The current system is more, not less, independent from politics than the previous one, where political appointees oversaw media outlets directly." VARIOUS OF JOURNALISTS WORKING IN MTVA NEWSROOM (SOUNDBITE) (Hungarian) MTVA SPOKESMAN, LASZLO SZABO, SAYING: "The fact that there are mistakes, idiotic mistakes ev
  • Embargoed: 10th January 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Hungary, Hungary
  • Country: Hungary
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA61ONV2GM3Y1LEHKVOTPDBNXOK
  • Story Text: Camped outside Hungary's public broadcaster, a small group of television editors is on hunger strike to protest what they say is widespread news manipulation by the government.
    The broadcaster and the government deny the accusation. But the controversy has drawn fresh criticism of centre-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban, already under fire for promoting a law critics said curbed the independence of the media and freedom of expression.
    What touched off the hunger strike was an alleged attempt to shut out of any news programme a former chief judge, Zoltan Lomnici, who had been appointed by the previous Socialist government. Editors were ordered not to interview or show him on screen, to the point of blurring his image on the screen, editors at the public broadcaster told the local media.
    "What have been going on in the last one and half year it was just incredibly unacceptable. It was not just that they tried to influence the media, not just that they put their people here but these people were just going beyond all kinds of limits, they distorted information, they made false information, all kinds of legal requirements for objective, impartial and biased information they were just violated not once, so what happened with this Lomnici case, the former head of judge blurred out image, it just was the top of the iceberg," said television union leader Balazs Nagy Navarro.
    A spokesman with the Media Service Support and Asset Management Fund (MTVA), which provides content for public service news channels, said editors were independent.
    "The current system is more, not less, independent from politics than the previous one, where political appointees oversaw media outlets directly," spokesman Laszlo Szabo said.
    "The fact that there are mistakes, idiotic mistakes even, like in the Lomnici case, (which happen) one in one year, I add, - does not have to mean that any politician would sneak into the evening news desk and rewrite the news with his own pen," Szabo added.
    The media law, backed by the government's two-thirds majority in parliament last year, required all broadcasters to provide balanced coverage of news and to register with a state authority. A Hungarian radio station Tilos went off air a year ago in a protest against the law.
    The legislation sparked outcry in Europe and was modified after the EU Commission threatened to take legal action.
    But current and former editors at the public broadcaster told Reuters the government remained able to manipulate news content, and did so routinely.
    "What went on in practice is beyond imagination. The news director stood behind the back of the reporters and practically dictated the text, he made corrections, changes in the text. All the reports had to suggest that everything that's happening now is good, and the past 8 years were bad and everything had to be interpreted in this context in the news," said Norbert Fekete, a former editor at the evening news programmes at MTVA, who was fired in July.
    One media expert told Reuters the new media law was to blame, as it put a council of political appointees in charge of enforcing media regulation, but they turn a blind eye when the government meddles with news.
    "The fundamental problem is that the current media law allows exclusive control for the government with its two third majority in parliament over the whole media system, including the public media. It goes against the tradition, the very valuable tradition of the freedom of the press in Hungary," Peter Molnar, a professor of media at the Central European University in Budapest, said.
    Changes passed to the media legislation narrow the scope of the law so that it no longer prescribes balanced news coverage for on-demand services such as Internet sites or blogs.
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