The Hungarian government was almost always mentioned in a positive context in the Hungarian online press from Transylvania during the period leading up to elections in Hungary in early April. News regarding the opposition were either ignored or presented in a fully negative and discrediting language.

At the same time, topics which are embarrassing for the Hungarian government were almost completely absent from the Hungarian online press in Transylvania, and voices critical to the government are also very hard to find.

It comes as no surprise, in fact: the majority of the Hungarian press in Transylvania is funded by either the Hungarian government or it recent main ally in Transylvania, the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians from Romania (DAHR).

In order to have a methodical look on how the Hungarian online press in Transylvania presents the election, we analysed around 700 articles – news, analyses, interviews and editorials – published in the Hungarian online press from Transylvania from the end of August 2021 to 11 February 2022, the official beginning of the election campaign in Hungary.

Search for keywords

Our data collection methods were simple: we searched for keywords relevant for the topic (e.g. “Márki-Zay Péter”, “Orbán Viktor”, “regisztráció” [registration]) in the search field of the most popular Hungarian online press products, and collected, structured and categorised the results by topics.

The websites analysed: Székelyhon, Krónika, Főtér, Erdon, Maszol, Transindex, Nethuszár, Szatmári Friss Újság, Háromszék, Szabadság, itthon.ma, erdely.ma, szekelyföld.ma, Erdélyi Napló, Székely Hírmondó.

The analysis focused on the most popular websites. However, we have no data on how many readers the articles had, or how many readers they reached in social media.

It is important to note that the number of the results was dependent on the search engines of the individual sites. We suspect that we might not have found all articles due to the faulty operation of the search engines on some sites, although we did try to use alternative search terms to add to the results.

Positive Light on Viktor Orbán, No Light on the Opposition

It can be said about the collected articles in general that they present the Hungarian government and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán most often in a positive, or less often in a neutral light. The opposition politicians are most often presented in a negative, less often in a neutral context, if they appear at all. It is clearly visible that the opposition of the Hungarian government gets very little space on Transylvanian online platforms.

At the same time, events that were uncomfortable for the Hungarian government were completely left out of the news. There is no coverage, for instance, about the corruption case of Pál Völner, state secretary in the Minister of Justice, also involving Árpád János Potápi, state secretary for national policies, who often visits Transylvania.

The Hungarian press from Transylvania, which has always been closely following the events in Hungary, also failed to cover last year’s record budget deficit and the resulting restrictions, just as the Pegasus spy software surveillance was completely omitted in the news.

Scandals related to Hungarian communities living outside Hungary are also hardly present

Scandals related to the Hungarian government parties are not in the news in Transylvania even if they concern the funding of Hungarian communities living outside Hungary or even if their main protagonist is an official of Transylvanian origin. We found no mention of the case which involved the Odorheiu-Secuiesc-born László Veress, Head of Cabinet of László Kövér, Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary.

His family lives in a luxury villa bought by a foundation which supports Hungarians outside Hungary for 240 million HUF. However, another article on László Veress’s villa in the village of Tibod near Odorheiu Secuiesc resulted in an outraged article published in response.

Orbán the good, Márki-Zay the bad guy

Viktor Orbán appears in the majority of the articles in a positive or neutral light. Most news about him are positive and inspiring, he himself is presented as a strong-willed, self-possessed politician, who resists (western) trends but looks after the interests of the Hungarians.

Péter Márki-Zay, the opposition’s Prime Minister candidate, appears in just the opposite light: he is weak (Gyurcsány’s puppet), his campaign is funded by László Bige, the “red baron”, he makes statements perceived as negative by most of the voters (criticises the governmental decrease of utilities costs), has negative gestures (offends Hungarians living outside Hungary with his statements), or the opposition coalition is doing badly in the polls.

While Orbán’s speeches are quoted at length, the words of the opposition candidate are usually cited outside their context, and often accompanied by malicious or inappropriate comments. For example, Gyurcsány’s name is also often included in the article, regardless of the subject of Márki-Zay’s original statement.

The Sekler media trust keeps completely silent about the opposition

There is a spectacular difference in how the media outlets belonging to the two large media empires close to the Hungarian government – the Association for Transylvanian Media Space and the KESMA – treat the Hungarian opposition.

The three news portals Székelyhon, Krónika and Főtér, owned by the Association for Transylvanian Media Space which has been funded in the past couple of years with 20 million euros by the Hungarian government, rarely publish content related to the opposition.

For example, the results of the opposition pre-elections in October were only worth a short piece of news on Krónika, taken over from the Hungarian news agency MTI (although it is true that they did take over the MTI news quoting at length the opposition speeches at the 23 October commemorations given by the opposition parties).

Márki-Zay’s victory at the pre-elections failed to be newsworthy on one of the most popular news portals of the Hungarian press in Transylvania, the Székelyhon, and it wasn’t covered on Főtér portal either.

It must also be emphasized that this silence also means that negative news about the Hungarian opposition are also scarce on these platforms.

Sending messages to Márki-Zay

The only case that captured the editors’ interest was when the mayor of Odorheiu Secuiesc, Árpád Gálfi, put out Facebook vote whether he should meet with Péter Márki-Zay. This was a detailed piece of news on Székelyhon. Later a “leaked” letter of the Hungarian local government leaders to Márki-Zay in which they informed him that they did not wish to meet with him before the elections became the subject of news pieces both on Székelyhon and Főtér.

At the same time, an unusually large amount of news was published in Krónika about the meeting between Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin on 1 February: four MTI news and an analysis. Generally speaking, this platform has a relatively high coverage of the situation in Ukraine and the Hungarian government’s foreign policy compared to the average for Transylvania (although largely based on MTI news reports).

Erdon.ro has joined the mud-slinging full steam ahead

While all the platforms in the portfolio of the Association for Transylvanian Media Space seem to avoid any news related to the opposition, the erdon.ro, a page in the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA) media trust, follows a radically different strategy. This page publishes as many as half a dozen news a day on Péter Márki-Zay and other politicions or supporters of the opposition.

Perhaps this amount can be better appreciated if we say that more than half (389) of the 700 news items we collected were published on erdon.ro. The vast majority of these unauthored pieces portray the opposition in a negative light, either on the basis of some out-of-context half-sentence or a Facebook post by a pro-government politician, expert or supporter.

A few titles that give a sense of the content of these materials:

From mocking disability to the Death Star – Márki-Zay’s top 5 most controversial statements (video);

Zsolt Bayer: Márki-Zay has found the best way to fight the epidemic: spitting in a mask;

In desperation, a totally confused Márki-Zay would argue with anyone (videos).

Getting close to Fidesz has put the DAHR’s news portal in a schizophrenic situation

Maszol.ro is the other most visited Hungarian news portal in Transylvania besides szekelyhon.ro. Its publisher is the Progress Foundation, founded by the DAHR. It receives most of its budget from the DAHR, although its sponsors include the Hungarian state as well – the Bethlen Gábor Fund, the Hungarian state electricity company (Magyar Villamos Művek Zrt.) and state gambling company (Szerencsejáték Zrt.).

Traditionally, maszol.ro has tended to be a left-leaning media outlet, but this has somewhat changed since the DAHR has become the main ally of the Hungarian government in Transylvania. In the analysed period, the news published on maszol.ro present a mixed picture. Several articles were published about the pre-elections of the opposition, including one about a Facebook post by mayor of Odorheiu Secuiesc Árpád Gálfi about Péter Márki-Zay, with the title: Árpád Gálfi has got himself into an embarrassing diplomatic mishap. The paper also presented the position of Transylvanian intellectuals on the upcoming Hungarian elections.

At the same time, it has also been news worth publishing on maszol.ro that Viktor Orbán had a telephone conversation with Donald Trump or that Viktor Orbán had his third vaccine, and the portal quotes at length, on the basis of MTI news, Viktor Orbán’s campaign launch with the title: Viktor Orbán: The Left, whatever it’s like, “is part of the nation like ill fate is part of the Hymn” [the National Anthem of Hungary].

The vote of Hungarians from Transylvania is no longer controversial

Almost all media outlets in Transylvania publish information about the organisation of parliamentary elections. The registration campaign launched by the Eurotrans Foundation and the Hungarian National Council of Transylvania has had a great media coverage.

The campaign tour of Barna Pál Zsigmond, Ministerial Commissioner of Fidesz, former Consul General in Miercurea Ciuc, was featured in a number of news portals, just like Árpád Potápi’s and Katalin Szili’s visits.

All of these materials emphasize that Hungarians in Transylvania with a Hungarian citizenship are strongly encouraged to register for vote. News about the date of the elections was also published everywhere.

It is striking that none of these newspapers express any reservations or criticisms about the voting of Hungarians living outside the borders of Hungary. During previous parliamentary elections, this issue generated serious debate in the Transylvanian Hungarian press.

Copy-paste MTI news instead of their own questions

It can also be seen that in a press conference or interview, journalists do not ask questions that might be uncomfortable for the politician representing the Hungarian government or that might contradict the narrative of the Hungarian government. The materials do not try to put the statements in context, but only quote at length sentences which are clearly prefabricated political panels.

One explanation for this may be that the Hungarian press in Transylvania very often uses MTI news – and political considerations have long taken the place of independent news editing at the state news agency, as Direkt36 has uncovered.

It even happens that outlets don’t send their own reporter to a press conference even if they could easily participate. Instead, they prefer the convenient solution of taking over MTI’s coverage. It is also relatively rare for journalists to produce their own material – i.e. to work with multiple news sources, use data of public interest, or investigate certain topics themselves.

Transindex covered more opposition content, but it ceased to exist

Transindex.ro was the only portal that has been critical of the Hungarian government at times and has given more space to the opposition in Hungary. It was the only one to report on the members of Péter Márki-Zay’s shadow government and to devote a long section to the opposition’s programme. In Transylvania, Transindex was the only newspaper to interview Péter Márki-Zay.

However, Transindex ceased to exist after the DAHR-founded Communitas Foundation, the main funder of the Transindex project, announced in spring 2021 that it would no longer finance the portal. On 15 February 2022, the entire editorial team resigned, and a day later they announced the launch of a new project, Transtelex. This project is currently at the fundraising stage, it is not known when the new site will be launched. We wrote about the background of the situation at Transindex here.

Translation: Emese Czintos

Cover photo: Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán with Hunor Kelemen, president of the DAHR. Source: the Facebook page of DAHR president Hunor Kelemen

This article is part of our project aiming to monitor the 2022 parliamentary elections in Hungary. The project was funded in part by a grant from Investigative Journalism Europe (IJ4EU) and a grant from the United States Department of State. The opinions, findings and conclusions stated herein are those of the author[s] and do not necessarily reflect those of the funders.

The post Positive Light on Viktor Orbán, No Light on the Opposition appeared first on Átlátszó Erdély.

One year after the “vertical and horizontal development” of the Erdély 3.0 “complex concept”, there is no visible output of the 1.45 billion HUF (4.5 million EUR) grant of the Hungarian government. On the 20th of March 2019 another 1.9 million HUF (6 million EUR) were allocated by the Hungarian PM to the Erdélyi Médiatér Association (its official name: Asociatia pentru Spatiul Media Transilvan).

According to the 1148/2019. (III. 20.) governmental decision the grant aims to support the “Hungarian language media of the Carpathian Basin”, and will be wired through the Bethlen Gábor Foundation in 2 installments of 950 million forints.

But how was the previously allocated 1.45 billion HUF spent?

We are still groping in the dark as the Ministry of Human Resources denied to release the detailed budget, narrative proposal and financial report. The reason? In December 2018 the beneficiary asked for a change in the document, and the contract is undergoing changes, thus the information we requested is used as a reference in the decision making process.

The Freedom of Information Act in Hungary was amended in 2015, and information used to ground decision making process was exempted from the range of public information. This became the perfect blanket rule: as all information is used as basis of reference in decision making processes, it can be applied to anything.

But the amendment of the contract is not the reason why the Ministry of Human Resources rejected releasing public information: in July 2018, when the amendment of the supporting document hasn’t been launched yet, we were denied the requested information and data regarding the detailed budget plan and the narrative proposal with the same argument, that the information qualifies as data used as a basis of reference for making future decisions.

The contract does not reveal what the money is being spent on

Previously, in March 2018 we handed in a similar FOI request to which we didn’t receive any answers – truth be told, a couple of weeks sooner, the Ministry of Human Resources released the contract signed with the Erdélyi Médiatér Association, but the contract contained no information on what the money was spent on.

Why are we interested in the financial support received by the Erdélyi Médiatér Association? The NGO in the past published the medium-sized Foter.ro internet news website, and was basically unknown up until December 2017, when it received 1.45 billion forints, equaling 4,5 million euros from the Hungarian government.

This amount was astronomical. Just to give you a sense of the annual budgets of Hungarian media in Transylvania: Foter.ro news website previously a yearly budget of 40 million HUF (120,000 EUR). The yearly budgets of the szekelyhon.ro having a similar number of readers as maszol.ro was of 180,000 EUR. (Our article on the Hungarian government funding of the Hungarian online media in Transylvania can be accessed here).

The guesses about how this money will be spent started instantly. It was clear right from the start that the bigger part of this amount will be used for saving the Udvarhelyi Híradó Ltd., currently undergoing bankruptcy. We wrote a summary about the situation of the company, which found itself in the middle of the Simicska-Orbán quarrel in December, 2017.

Long story short, by December 2017 several dailies (Krónika, Vásárhelyi Hírlap, Csíki Hírlap, Gyergyói Hírlap, Udvarhelyi Híradó), and one weekly (Erdélyi Napló) as well as the most viewed news portal (szekelyhon.ro), all published by Udvarhelyi Híradó SRL found themselves in deadlock and asked for bankruptcy protection.

Besides bad management, the company found itself trapped in the middle of a political game. The relation between Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán and his former ally, the leader of Fidesz’s economic heartland, Lajos Simicska deteriorated.

In 2015 the conflict escalated into an open war, which, besides threatening messages being sent to one another, also meant that the Hungarian government did everything to make Simicska’s situation difficult and eventually push his companies out of business. They have succeeded following the elections of 2018.

The situation affected the Udvarhelyi Híradó SRL:

1. The owner of the company, „Határok nélkül a magyar sajtóért” Foundation (Without Borders for the Hungarian Press Foundation) was controlled by Simicska;

2. Simicska was not willing to invest in the Hungarian media abroad, but wasn’t willing to hand over the media to Orbán for free;

3. Because they were afraid that Simicska would use the state support for own purposes, the Hungarian government and state companies were reluctant to sponsor the foundation;

4. Udvarhelyi Híradó Ltd. wasn’t able to cover its expenses, and asked for bankruptcy protection.

2018 was the year of acquisitions

How does the project initiated by Szilárd Demeter, the unofficial ambassador of the Erdélyi Médiatér Association look like and how was it designed to significantly alter and modernize the Hungarian media in Transylvania? Demeter has no official role in the association, but he was the one who lobbied for the huge amount of funding eventually granted by the Hungarian government.

Demeter, having Sekler roots has graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, and started his political career as the press officer of MEP László Tőkés. After that he started working for Századvég Foundation, a think thank close to the Hungarian government. It is not known what he was working on there, but there are signs that he was in the team of Árpád Habony, a communications guru of the government. Not long ago he was named the director of the Petőfi Literary Museum.

In January 2018, Demeter gave an interview about his plans in the Hungarian media in Transylvania:

“We presented a complex concept, which besides building an integrated media contains also the elements that could shape and create the Transylvanian media scene, and provided the concept for all those platforms that would be put in the service of community building. We would mostly favor online platforms, as this is the direction where things are going.

We are not only thinking about platforms, but also of an efficient online content management and we have suggestion for developing other ideas as well. We are looking into developing infocommunications solutions that could help the actors of the Hungarian arena of the neighboring countries. There is a separate workgroup which is focusing on this.”

A simple media consumer wouldn’t be able to tell that the media outlets in the interest of Erdélyi Médiatér Association have flourished following the significant capital they had received. The quality of the content is the same as it was before, there are no signs of technical developments, and the initial enthusiasm of the journalists also disappeared.

It is also true though, that we have not seen propaganda either, despite the fact that the media in Hungary has been completely transformed into a propaganda machine, and many feared that this will happen in the Transylvanian media as well.

A series of small businesses started to gravitate around the NGO. Because of the denial of the release of public information, we need to rely on the Romanian company database and a couple of facts mentioned by László Szőke, the director of the media portfolio in his essaylike paper published on the 4th of March, 2019. We have addressed him a series of questions related to the events in 2018, but we are still waiting for his answers.

Rekordösszegű médiatámogatások Erdélyben: burjánzó cégháló, nem szűnő homály – Átlátszó Erdély

Tegnap újabb 1,9 milliárd forint támogatást ítélt meg a magyar kormány az Erdélyi Médiatér Egyesület számára a korábbi 1,45 milliárd után. De hogy áll jelenleg az erdélyi és Kárpát-medencei magyar média nagyszabású átalakítása és korszerűsítése? Ha az egyesület körül megjelenő cégek száma a siker mércéje, akkor egy igazi Kárpát-medencei sikersztorinak vagyunk a szemtanúi.

The story started on January 8th, 2018, when the Udvarhelyi Híradó Ltd., under bankruptcy procedure was saved on the platform of a company from Székelyudvarhely called Prima Press Ltd., which was operating a small local radio and a teletext. Prima Press provided the platform for saving the local news outlets (Vásárhelyi Hírlap, az Udvarhelyi Híradó, Csíki Hírlap and Gyergyói Hírlap), together with the Székelyhon news website and Krónika national daily, which were all operated by the Udvarhelyi Híradó Ltd. Prima Press also took over the several hundred employees of the Udvarhelyi Híradó Ltd.

At that date, on January 8th there was no official relation between Prima Press Ltd. and the NGO. According to the Official Monitor, on January 26th there was a raise in the association’s registered capital, so the association ended up owning 4.7% of the company owned by a local businessman, János László, and by his company, Arkum Invest Ltd. Two weeks later, on February 8th, the Erdélyi Médiatér Association acquired Prima Press Ltd. completely.

Export of knowledge to the Hungarian communities of the neighbouring countries

In February 2018 a company named Magyar Médiaszolgáltatást Támogató Központ Nonprofit Ltd. (Hungarian Mediaservice Support Nonprofit Ltd.) was registered in Hungary. The founder of the company was Éva Judit Korda, who is also the president of the Határok Nélkül a Magyar Sajtóért Foundation, the owner of Udvarhelyi Híradó Ltd.

What is the role of the Magyar Médiaszolgáltatást Támogató Központ Nonprofit Ltd.? According to Szőke, this nonprofit has the role to export the (nonprofit oriented) knowledge of the Transylvanian holding to the Hungarian communities living in the neighbouring countries, Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine, and has the role to provide full IT support to the group of companies.

In May 2018 Transversum Ltd. was founded – its founders are the Magyar Médiaszolgáltatást Támogató Központ Nonprofit Ltd. and the Erdélyi Médiatér Association. Transversum is dealing with the financial, human resource and legal matters of the holding, covers management and estate administration tasks, and also functions as its advertising agency. (We wrote in detail about the Transversum Ltd. here).

They have engulfed the mediaproject of the Hungarian right wing party, Jobbik

In May, 2018 the Varjúvár Kiadó Ltd. was founded – its founders were the Magyar Médiaszolgáltatást Támogató Központ Nonprofit Ltd. and Erdélyi Médiatér Association. According to Szőke this company is responsible for projects which do not have a publisher (Előretolt Helyőrség, Nőileg, Nethuszár, Székelyföld.ma). This same publishing house is also operating the documentation and investigations center of the conglomerate and publishes the Székelyhon daily’s monthy annex, Kilátó.

The group is also publishing the monthly literary magazine called Előretolt Helyőrség, and Nőileg, another monthly magazine, as well as the online portal of Cimbora, dedicated to children, called cimbora.net, and also two smaller sites: Nethuszár and the Székelyföld.ma. The latter used to be closely related to the Hungarian right wing party, Jobbik. The Háromszék, Székely Hírmondó, Nyugati Jelen and Brassói Lapok are also partners of the trust.

At the beginning of August 2018, there was a raise in the registered capital of Agotika Ltd., which operates the Friss FM radio station in Sepsiszentgyörgy. Thus, Erdélyi Médiatér Association became also one of the owners together with Prima Press Ltd. Its previous owner, Judit Ágota Petroczki left the company on August the 20th.

Szőke’s report also reveals that the radio station Mix Fm, Fény TV channel, and the local teletext of Gyergyószentmiklós operated by Kelet Info Ltd. also became part of the trust. (This transaction bears no trace in the company register, but probably because the register has not yet been updated).

Is Szőke loosing influence?

An important factor would be that László Szőke’s role has started to diminish: he has been a key figure of the mediaproject for a while informally, later formally, but since August 2018, he was placed in a role that sounds important, but is probably insignificant: he is the development director of the media portfolio.

The management of Prima Press Ltd. was taken over by a former journalist and businessman, Imre Zilahi. He has also become the manager of Agotika Invest Ltd. and Transversum Ltd. The manager of Magyar Médiaszolgáltatást Támogató Központ Nonprofit Ltd. is Áron Győrfi, while the manager of Varjúvár Kiadó Ltd. is István Horváth.

For the readers of these journals the biggest change is that 4 local dailies (Vásárhelyi Hírlap, Udvarhelyi Híradó, Csíki Hírlap and Gyergyói Hírlap) merged into a single one, and the merged content is published on 12 pages in Székelyhon, a change which saw a series of mixed reactions: many readers look for reading local news and topics.

According to Szőke’s report, 2018 was the year of building: “all members of the trust have undergone an internal financial audit, and they are looking forward to the integrated management of core business processes (ERP) soon to be introduced. The editorial offices were upgraded and a unified content managerial system has also been introduced, which also functions as the biggest, up to date, live databank of press releases”.

„And this is just the beggining…” – says Szőke at the end of his article.

We asked for legal remedy in relation to our unanswered public data requirement, and we are following closely its aftermath and will keep you updated with any further developments on the issue and topic as well.

Translation: Etelka Tamás-Balha

Photo: Szilárd Demeter (right) and László Mohácsi (left) the president of the Erdélyi Médiatér Association. Source: Facebook

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