{"id":7614,"date":"2026-07-03T09:02:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T07:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/?p=7614"},"modified":"2026-07-03T09:02:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T07:02:49","slug":"hungarys-revival-with-the-media-in-pieces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/hungarys-revival-with-the-media-in-pieces\/","title":{"rendered":"Hungary’s revival, with the media in pieces"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The front page of the first edition of the Hungarian newspaper N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, published on November 2, 1956. The newspaper was shut down by Orb\u00e1n in October 2016.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Imagine a country that, sixteen years after an illiberal, freedom-crushing regime, finds itself, just months after the electoral revolution that restored its democracy, without a single printed daily newspaper. Ten years ago, Hungary, a country of 9.5 million people, could count on four national political dailies: two controlled by the government (Magyar Nemzet and Magyar H\u00edrlap) and two close to the left-wing opposition (N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g and N\u00e9pszava). The brutal closure imposed by the government on the popular N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g in October 2016, which had exposed corruption among officials close to the prime minister, was a stark warning sign of the authoritarian drift in Viktor Orb\u00e1n’s system. In the wake of the triumphant 2022 elections, the Orb\u00e1n government decided to suspend the print edition of the small Magyar H\u00edrlap. Until a few weeks ago, two political dailies remained, but on May 29 the Mediaworks group \u2014 closely tied to Fidesz and the former government, while also owning the historic social-democratic newspaper N\u00e9pszava, which had been in print for 153 years \u2014 decided to halt its printing overnight. Mediaworks then also announced it would cease publication of the last remaining national political daily on the Hungarian market. Starting August 1, Magyar Nemzet, published with few interruptions since 1938, will become a weekly. The crisis of the printed press is, of course, a broader, general phenomenon. In recent years, the newspapers mentioned had been selling between 3,000 and 5,000 copies for the government-aligned dailies, up to 15,000 copies for N\u00e9pszava, amid a swift and unstoppable erosion of market share.<\/p>\n

Here, though, there’s more to it. Behind these cutbacks lie the exhaustion of the billions earmarked for state advertising, the collapse of the financing systems that had propped up media outlets tied to Fidesz, and measures taken by the budget commissioners posted within state institutions. At its peak, the portfolio of Kesma (the Central European Press and Media Foundation, created in 2018) included nearly 500 outlets \u2014 newspapers, provincial papers, weeklies, websites, and radio and television stations: a media empire without equal in Europe or anywhere else.<\/p>\n

Following the April 12 elections, the media system Orb\u00e1n had built up over decades disintegrated with a speed that surprised even industry insiders. As the summer of democratic revival unfolds, Hungary risks finding itself without daily newspapers and with television news coverage cut to the bone. How should this paradox be read?<\/p>\n

Starting in May, hundreds of journalists, propagandists, influencers, and editors at local newspapers, websites, and political communication outlets received termination letters from their employers. An even larger number will receive them shortly, since, with the approval of the new media law, the restructuring of the Hungarian media landscape will extend to Mtva, the holding company that controls the public broadcasting system. Since 2011, Mtva had centralized in the hands of a single-party board of directors not only public radio and television, but also the country’s sole national news agency, Mti. Over the years, Mtva had become a monster in terms of cost (400-450 million euros a year) and a tool of relentless propaganda, detested by a growing share of the population as one of the system’s most oppressive symbols. After the elections, the entire broadcasting system clumsily tried to shift its political orientation to ingratiate itself with the new powers that be, but Prime Minister P\u00e9ter Magyar was not moved. On June 23, the Budapest Parliament approved by a wide majority the dissolution of the old board and a radical restructuring of public broadcasting, accompanied by drastic staff cuts.<\/p>\n

Under the direction of ministerial commissioner Judit Gr\u00f3sz, an expert in the media market and digital transition, a provisional leadership of the public media is about to take office, tasked with carrying out a financial and professional review to “shed light on how the public media operated in the past.” According to Gr\u00f3sz, under the previous management, state media used vast public funds to serve political power. “We must therefore return the public media to those who have a right to them: the Hungarian people,” she stressed. “That is precisely why we believe it’s important to open a dialogue with industry players and with society. Since the public media belong to the community, citizens have the right to decide their future,” wrote Zolt\u00e1n Tarr, minister of Culture and Social Dialogue.<\/p>\n

Behind the debate over how the new broadcasting system will be structured, and the melancholy disappearance of the printed dailies, lies a point worth reflecting on that goes beyond this specific case. The extreme control Orb\u00e1n imposed on traditional media forced independent and\/or opposition outlets to migrate to digital platforms. In recent years, millions of Hungarians have abandoned the “official” media for a myriad of editorial projects that, as in the case of the YouTube channel Partiz\u00e1n, active since 2018, have managed to turn a substantial share of the audience into podcast consumers. As M\u00e1rton Magyar, creator of the successful media start-up Kontroll and, not least, the prime minister’s brother, proudly puts it, “Hungary is now at the forefront in Europe when it comes to producing low-cost, easily accessible news content.” Has the time truly come to say goodbye to old-style general-interest television? Is it possible to (re)build democracy without printed daily newspapers? Hungary’s political evolution will offer useful pointers for the liberal-democratic camp on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine a country that, sixteen years after an illiberal, freedom-crushing regime, finds itself, just months after the electoral revolution that restored its democracy, without a single printed daily newspaper. Ten years ago, Hungary, a country of 9.5 million people, could count on four national political dailies: two controlled by the government (Magyar Nemzet and Magyar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":12,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7614"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7775,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7614\/revisions\/7775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}