Hungarian journalists feel the pressure lifting after Orbán’s defeat

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Just a few months ago, Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi faced smear campaigns in the pro-government media and accusations by top officials of spying for Ukraine. When the government filed a criminal complaint against him for espionage , he faced the prospect of years in prison, and left for Poland.

Now, following an election in April that swept former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán out of office after 16 years in power, Panyi is again strolling the streets of the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and preparing to release his book, “Friends with Benefits,” which details Russian intelligence penetration and influence operations in Hungary.

Orbán's landslide loss in the election changed the fortunes of Panyi and many other journalists in the Central European country, where the populist leader had consolidated control over the media and cracked down on press freedoms .

When Orbán returned to power in 2010, Hungary ranked 23rd on press watchdog Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. But by last year, it had dropped to 68th, and the group had put Orbán — an ally of both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — on its list of media “predators.”

But now, under Hungary’s new center-right, pro-European government led by Prime Minister Péter Magyar , pressure on independent journalists has eased. Two weeks after the April election, police announced they'd dropped the Orbán government's espionage complaint against Panyi, a fact he said showed that police and prosecutors had been under Orbán's “tight political control.”

“The political pressure is gone,” he said. “It’s not all happy and shiny yet. But I believe we’re in a much, much better place than we were before April.”

For a decade and a half, Orbán and his far-right Fidesz party operated a sprawling pro-government media empire that bolstered their narratives, smeared opponents and controlled what an independent analysis found was around 80% of Hungary's media market.

On the campaign trail, Magyar vowed to end what he called “Orbán propaganda,” particularly that emanating from Hungary's taxpayer-funded public media, which had served as a government mouthpiece.

After taking office in May, Magyar's administration suspended news programming on public radio and television. Viewers who tuned in saw only white text on a black screen which read: “Public media should not lie. We are sorry for doing it for so many years!”

Since then, much of the public media's leadership has been replaced and news broadcasts have resumed.

Gábor Polyák, a media researcher and professor who took over as head of Hungary's media authority last week, said that during Orbán's rule the nine-member media council was composed exclusively of members nominated by Fidesz, who assisted in creating “an incredible concentration in the market, basically for political reasons.”

Under the new government, half the media council Polyák leads is nominated by the governing party and half by opposition parties, with the president selected through an open application process and elected by lawmakers.

“Legislative steps have been taken with the explicit aim of not creating a one-sided political authority,” Polyák said.

Magyar's government has taken other steps to dismantle Orbán's media dominance, including shuttering Hungary’s Sovereignty Protection Office — a Fidesz-era authority seen by opponents as a tool for intimidating critics and silencing independent media — and passing legislation prohibiting “political advertisements that incite hatred” that were a hallmark of campaign periods .

Under Orbán, the government was the largest advertiser in Hungary, and a study by watchdog Mérték Media Monitor showed up to 90% of state advertising revenue was awarded to pro-Fidesz media outlets, keeping them financially afloat.

Those revenue streams have since dried up, and scores of Fidesz-tied outlets and social media influencers have sharply cut back or closed.

In October 2016, Hungary’s largest-circulation political daily, the left-leaning Népszabadság, was suddenly shut down after its parent company was acquired by an investor with ties to Orbán. The closure sparked large demonstrations, and Népszabadság’s journalists called the move a coup.

It was one of several acquisitions by businesspeople with Fidesz ties which transformed well-established independent outlets into faithful communications assets for Orbán's government.

Now, Népszabadság has relaunched, and last week began distributing weekly print issues 10 years after its closure.

Gábor Horváth, who has returned as deputy editor-in-chief of Népszabadság, said the paper's 2016 closure was “for obviously political reasons,” and that Orbán’s government had been operating on the basic rules of a street fight: “Hit the strongest guy first.”

He said the government tried to seize the totality of the media landscape, and that the paper's reappearance signals a return to a time when media are “totally free in Hungary.”

Some independent journalists still fault the government’s treatment of the media.

On Thursday, news outlet Telex published an article criticizing Magyar’s government for not releasing the summaries or agendas of cabinet meetings, much as Orbán’s government had done. Magyar himself has received criticism for singling out independent news outlets on social media for coverage he didn't like.

Panyi, the investigative journalist, said that, like under Orbán, some freedom of information requests he and his colleagues send to the government are refused or ignored — though he attributed that largely to holdovers from the Fidesz government still working in the state bureaucracy.

Still, the new government has taken steps to improve press access to public officials. Orbán's government had banned numerous outlets from reporting from Hungary's parliament, while those allowed inside were restricted to a narrow section of a hallway — easily avoided by officials — that some journalists described as a “cage.”

Now, reporters may move freely through the parliament's corridors and question officials.

Horváth, with Népszabadság, said Hungary “is changing for the better, and the media needs to find new momentum within the society.”

“We feel again the winds of changes and the optimism which we haven’t seen for so many years,” he said.