Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: European public media to fight populist regimes
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Remarks from Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi:
In this article, the politician advocates the forming of a new, independent European media outlet to combat the populist politicians’ trend to silence possible channels of opposition and to promote the populist propaganda news.
The debate on the Hungarian, Polish and Slovenian media situation was one of the most highly publicized items on the agenda of the European Parliament’s latest plenary meeting. It came as no surprise since Europe’s democratic political forces have been trying for years to tackle the challenges posed by populist politicians spreading fake news and conspiracy theories.
The problem can no longer be swept under the rug because, as the plenary debate showed, the number of affected countries is growing: even Slovenia is “on the radar” now.
Gyöngyösi says there are two main areas that definitely needs to be mentioned when talking about the situation of the media in the 21st century. The first issue, which was also raised in the plenary session, is the authoritarian-leaning governments’ actions against the freedom of speech and media pluralism. As Gyöngyösi pointed out in his speech, Hungary is probably in the gravest situation within the EU in this regard as the Orbán regime’s repeated attacks have almost completely liquidated the independent media during Fidesz’ now 11-year-long rule. The process started by reorganizing the Media Council back in the early 2010s. Since then, Orbán’s Fidesz has been the only party to delegate members into this body. The next step was the occupation of the state-run public media, reducing it to a mouthpiece for Fidesz. Since 2016, it has been common knowledge in Hungary that the public media conveys nothing but Fidesz’ views and it never gives voice to any opposition speaker or political dissenter. In fact, the supposedly public service media often conducts smear campaigns against opposition politicians, regularly using discriminatory and hatemongering remarks in its programmes. However, it was not enough, the process did not stop there: in the meantime, Fidesz took control of all regional newspapers, which serve as the primary source of information for Hungary’s rural population. After that, they began to steamroll all opposition newspapers through politically motivated operations disguised as business transactions with their strawmen. The most widely publicized operation was the liquidation of Népszabadság, the leading leftist-liberal daily paper, but the centre-right Magyar Nemzet, the former opinion shaper suffered an only slightly better fate: the entire editorial staff was replaced and the old newspaper logo is now attached to an inciting outlet that releases fake news. Albeit to a lesser extent, but the same happened to Index, Hungary’s leading online news portal. The opposition Klub Rádió was silenced through administrative measures.
The very fact that Gyöngyösi is able to put his view to the public through the media is in itself proof that
indeed there is freedom of speech, the fact that they twist and lie shamelessly and they can get away with it is also proof of freedom of expression.
Under the communist regime these people would have been severely “dealt” with.
The truth is that they are desperate to grab power and are prepared to use any weapon to achieve that goal.
In effect they are destroying themselves as the methods they use are self defeating.
I read everyday about the opposition in Hungary.
They have no shortage of complaints to talk about and when they do not have a valid complaint they just make one up!
But the Govt is effective in putting their side of the argument.
Contrast that to USA where President Trump was banned from social media and where President Biden has not had a single tough question from the media. And now we have German media actively planned to set up in Hungary to stop Orban.
Dangerous times ahead people!