The CEO of the company that publishes the newspaper Mandiner has been dismissed on instructions by the finance minister, Prime Minister Péter Magyar said on Facebook on Friday.
“Starting from today, all funding for this lying propaganda newspaper will be stopped,” Magyar added. Finance Minister András Kármán said on Facebook after Magyar’s post that “we are not spending the Hungarian people’s money on propaganda.”
“There is a place and a reason for the existence of quality journalism, but there is none for propaganda financed by public money,” he added.
Karman also said that the government had completely overhauled the public media, whose role is to provide credible and informative coverage — even if this contains information that is inconvenient for the government of the day –, rather than to serve the needs of the current political leadership.
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The period since the change of government had shown that certain market players had been able to operate solely because the then ruling party, in a sophisticated manner, rewarded them from public funds for spreading the messages that suited them, the minister said.
In the space of half a year last year, Mandiner secured nearly 400 million forints (EUR 1.1m) in state advertising, which, projected over a full year, amounts to nearly 800 million forints, Karman said. They received a further 1.1 billion forints in funding from the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Foundation, “but even with all this free money, they still managed to run up a deficit of 1.1 billion forints last year,” he added.
“We are channelling the public funds saved on propaganda into serving the Hungarian people and the economy,” he said. “This will result in a VAT reduction, back-to-school grants, increased pensions and, ultimately, a functioning and humane Hungary.”
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The problem with the media is lack of accountability.
Reporters and journalists have turned into political activists and campaigners. They do not see their duty as presenting information consisting of the W-questions in the quality and quantity that is in genuine public interest; they see themselves as opinion-formers, persuaders, culture-shapers. Most of them are, let’s be honest, at the very least Left-leaning.
If the government does not have its own “propaganda” outlet, it is at the mercy of the “independent” media, which may well be majority-hostile to the government.
If the government is not allowed to have its own media outlet(s), then there has to be a body that monitors media output and strips press credentials and broadcasting licenses from those that fail to conform to the criteria I touched upon in para. 2 above.
I wonder if any of the articles or comments here are paid for by the government. It felt like some might have been in the old administration. Also other governments- it’s not inconceivable that the U.S. government would pay shills or trolls, which I obviously don’t support but it wouldn’t surprise me unfortunately.
Media outlets have the perfect accountability: the paying readers of their news/articles. I don’t like all the nonsense advertising on this DNH site which creates revenue for the publisher but I like the fact based news and articles so I keep coming back.
Only if tax payers money is poured on media, they lose accountability and blindly do what their sole financier orders them to do – which was the case with Mandiner, financed solely by Fidesz who used tax payers money.
People want to read and hear facts and truths, not propaganda. No matter what these very active trolls here on this comment section try to convince, no democratic transparent government need to have their own propaganda outlet.
Great to see that public funding is cut from these propaganda media outlets by our current government.
If Mandiner had one iota of legitimacy with the media consuming public it could survive on a combination of print sales and advertising revenue for its print and online product. This is how media organs function in any normal country. The fact that Mandiner’s print edition ceased so soon after the election and the publishers don’t believe it can survive in the market as an independent publication speaks to two things, either or both of which is possible; that Mandiner had next to no readers and/or that readers were of the opinion that its output was so poor quality they wouldn’t be willing to pay a Filler for it. Generally, if output is low quality it follows that readership declines, therefore so will the potential to sell advertising space. The government didn’t close Mandiner, the readers (or lack thereof) did. As Tibor Navracsics has recently raised, the door was wide open for a wealthy benefactor (or consortium thereof) to step into the breach and underwrite Mandiner’s operating costs and those of other right wing outlets. The fact that they’ve failed to do so also speaks volumes.
Mandiner had a high profile in the erstwhile government’s media landscape, it was often advertised, the print publication was widely available at all news stands and its articles were often quoted elsewhere. All of this against a backdrop of relentless government and government-friendly messaging in circa 80% of Hungarian media outlets at the time. Despite this, Mandiner has apparently failed to build up any meaningful readership.
Here we are in September cutting off free government money to Fidesz propaganda outlet when the government took over in May. Why in the world wasn’t this done sooner. The great thing coming back to Budapest now is that you don’t have the feeling anymore of having arrived in some North Korean style dictatorship on your drive in from the airport. The billboards are are empty instead of having in your face propaganda pieces promoting Kremlin messaging. With all those empty billboards all over Budapest you can see with your own eyes how much of taxpayers’ money Orban poured into that Fidesz controlled company.
Larry, Mandiner became MCC’s publication. MCC had a ringfenced source of funds in its foundation. The government had to wait until the KEKVA system was legally dissolved in order to retake the assets the previous government had given to the MCC foundation to secure its long term financing, designed to allow it to weather a change of government (but they never imagined the opposition would be capable of winning a supermajority and therefore unwinding the structure). MCC has now been dissolved resulting in Mandiner passing to the Ministry of Finance who will shut it down. They turned off the money taps at the earliest possible opportunity, I don’t think MCC (and therefore Mandiner) received a Forint of public funds since April 12 but they’ve been self financing until the end of August as they were sitting on a pile of money in their foundation.