beyondbrics

By Kester Eddy in Budapest

If it’s not nationalising private pension funds, or introducing punitive business taxes at the drop of a hat, it’s aiming to increase its influence over the local private media (the state-run media already being in its grip).

Welcome to Hungary, where prime minister Viktor Orban’s government seems to have a knack of creating a disproportionate amount of adverse publicity in the international press these days. This week, the centre-right administration has attracted the criticism of media watchdogs, including Freedom House, the Washington-based NGO and the European Newspaper Publishers’ Association (ENPA), who have both condemned a planned media law.

As the ENPA put it, in an open letter to Mr Orban; “We are deeply concerned that this law poses a serious threat to freedom of the press and would, in particular, have a significant negative impact on investigative journalism.”

The bill, now before parliament in Budapest, is expected to be passed with nothing but minor amendments next Monday.

Proponents insist that it brings regulations on Hungary’s media up to date, whether it be providing protection for minors from sex and violence in children’s TV slots to ensuring the ordinary Janos-in-the-street with protection that he could otherwise not afford if unfairly attacked by the press.

No problem with that, says the EPA. it is much more concerned (as are local editors and journalists) with the wide-ranging and ill-defined powers of the new media council – a body stuffed with appointees of the ruling Fidesz party with the right to judge any article as unbalanced or offensive, and dish out hefty fines to editors and publishing house owners.

The ENPA has asked the government “to urgently revise the current package of draft legislation” to ensure that it serves Hungarian democracy.

But the government deftly sidesteps the argument. Because the media bill was put forward as a private members’ motion, and the media council is under parliamentary control, “it’s a matter for parliament,” says Anna Nagy, government spokesperson.

Private members’ motions also avoid the mandatory periods of consultation with affected parties, stipulated by law for government proposals – meaning bills can be fast-tracked into law with the minimum of fuss. Such tactics have exasperated opponents of many bills passed by the Fidesz-dominated house in the past seven months – and this one is no exception.

“This bill was posted on parliament’s website on November 22. It contains 201 paragraphs, and is 175 pages long. We were not consulted, although we initiated some sort of dialogue. In some cases we had just days, or even hours, to respond to complex issues. ” says Gyorgy Szabo, vice president of Hungarian Publishers Association.

The harried Szabo, who also has a publishing house to manage in his day job, says the language of the bill raises a long list of issues, and is often in language that is open to interpretation “sometimes with three or four different possible meanings” he says.

Given that the council can issue fines to daily papers to a maximum of €90,000, the various interpretations in meanings could lead to “serious sums” for publishers in Hungary, where readership – and cash flow – is relatively low, he says.

Orban, speaking to the Austrian Press Agency (APA) in Vienna yesterday, stoutly defended the bill.

“[The draft] does not contain any feature which does not exist in [the legislation] of [the various] media systems of any European country. It perfectly [compatible] with European media law,” he was quoted as saying.

“It’s great that we have a prime minister who knows every European media bill by heart. I have not read the Kazakh media law, but i can imagine it is very much like this [Hungarian] one. This will establish a very Kafka-esque, complicated system, which is not at all normal or clear,……. creating huge uncertainties for the media,” says Endre Bojtar, editor-in-chief of Magyar Narancs, a leading satirical weekly – ironically closely associated with Fidesz in its early days – which has criticised most governments in Hungary’s 20 years of democracy.

Fair enough. But does any of this have anything to do with the foreign investor?

Botjar answers: “This law alone, maybe not. But if I were a businessman, I would suppose fair democratic conditions and certain rights would be vital for my business. This is [yet another] in a series of laws and regulations curtailing one right or another.”

Hungary may not be drifting back into the authoritarianism that the young Orban rebelled against as an anti-Communist dissident. But his government’s actions are touched by a dangerously arbitrary streak. And arbitrary decisions can threaten the rule of law.

Related reading
Hungary file, beyondbrics