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.

Those who are familiar with the situation in the media are not surprised by the fact that the Hungarian media in Transylvania is facing severe lack of funding and is trying to stay afloat by using funds coming from Hungary.
But by 2016 there was a perceptible change in the funding policy: while before the Fidesz government was supporting the so-called „right-leaning” media platforms, today, irrespective of the views held, significant financial support is granted to the four most important portals- székelyhon.ro, maszol.ro, Transindex.ro and Főtér.ro – coming directly from the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office, from the public lottery, Szerencsejáték Zrt. and also from the state owned electricity company, MVM Zrt. The question is whether this support comes with a price, and if it does, how and when will it have to be repaid.

The original article in Hungarian:

Magához édesgette a Fidesz az erdélyi magyar online sajtót

The shift is significant. Even though in the past twenty five years the Hungarian media outlets in Transylvania were constantly receiving funding as part of the financial support framework targeting the Hungarian community in Transylvania, the beneficiaries changed according to which government, right-wing or left-wing was on power.

Megainvestments using Hungarian public money

A not too oversized financial support was every now and then granted to different media outlets. Péter Medgyessy made a hasty decision regarding funding which lead to creating the Transylvanian Hungarian Television (Erdélyi Magyar Televízió, ETV). After the change of government the most outstanding media investment also used Hungarian public money: since 2011 the majority owner of the biggest Hungarian media company in Transylvania, the Udvarhelyi Híradó SRL, is Foundation for Hungarian Media Without Borders (Határok Nélkül a Magyar Sajtóért Alapítvány). This foundation grants financial support to four local newspapers, regional dailies and weeklies, among them also the leading portal, székelyhon.ro.
The foundation is financing the media outlets with several million euros, its income being donations coming from state owned Hungarian companies. Besides the Udvarhelyi Híradó media outlet group, the foundation is also supporting Főtér.ro, a smaller portal publishing mainly op-eds.

From Simicska to the Propaganda Ministry

At the beginning the foundation used to be part of the sphere of influence of Lajos Simicska. But in 2015, in the aftermath of the Orbán-Simicska conflict, the businessman handed over the foundation together with all the Transylvanian and Southern Slovakian media outlets it used to provide financial support for.
Since then, according to their 2016 public financial report, the foundation received 150 million HUF (448,000 EUR), meaning 3/4th of its overall budget from the Prime Minister’s Office, which is called the „Propaganda Ministry” by Hungarian independent media. The Hungarian Development Bank (Magyar Fejlesztési Bank Zrt.) donated 50 million HUF (162,000 EUR).

They are also open towards the „left”

It still strikes as new, but it is probably due to the agreement between the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR) and Fidesz that the financial support policy has overcome the right-left dichotomy („left” and „right” are being used here for the sake of simplicity, they do not necessarily refer to political ideologies of the outlets): today, the two big DAHR- controlled and traditionally „left leaning” portals, maszol.ro and Transindex.ro are both partly financed by Hungarian public money.
For a long time, the „leftwing” media outlets did not receive any support from the Fidesz governments. In 2015 though the ice broke when Progress Foundation, which publishes the news portal maszol.ro received 2 million HUF (6,400 EUR) from Szerencsejáték Zrt. In the same year the Pallas Athéné Domus Concordiae Foundation (PADOC), created by the the Hungarian National Bank with the purpose of distributing financial support to Hungarian institutions outside of Hungary, granted 600 thousand HUF (1,900 EUR) to the Média Index Association which the publisher of Transindex.ro.
The smaller amounts were followed by more significant ones in 2016: maszol.ro (Progress Foundation) received 20 million HUF (64,000 EUR) from Szerencsejáték Zrt., Transindex.ro (Média Index Association) received 10-10 million HUF (a total of 20 million HUF, 64,000 EUR) from MVM, the Magyar Villamos Művek Zrt. and Szerencsejáték Zrt.

Why is this a problem?

This is a problem because nor the Prime Minister’s Office, nor PADOC, nor the MVM Zrt. or the Szerencsejáték Zrt. qualify as professional media investors. They have no interest in supporting transparency, free debate, and a professional Hungarian press in Transylvania. Instead, they serve and represent the interests of the Hungarian government and as such, discretely finance certain projects important for the Hungarian government.
By accident it has been revealed that the list of beneficiaries is not decided upon by the MVM Zrt. independently, but by the National Communications Authority. And this is probably also the case for Szerencsejáték Zrt.
Besides, the last time when we heard in Transylvania about the MVM Zrt. and Szerencsejáték Zrt. was when the two state owned companies granted financial support for a series of civil organizations related to the Hungarian People’s Party. This is why it is hard to believe that there are no terms and conditions written in the barely readable small print section.

Do those couple of millions really matter?

Compared to the huge amounts of money poured in government media the amounts granted to the Hungarian media in Transylvania is indeed not significant. But we should also keep in mind that apart from Udvarhelyi Híradó, we are talking about small news websites where maybe a dozen of journalists are working. For them, even 10,000 EUR is a significant amount, as their jobs might be depending on it.
In 2016, according to its annual financial report, the Erdélyi Médiatér Egyesület (Asociatia pentru Spatiul Media Transilvan/The Association for Transylvanian Media Space) which is the publisher of Főtér.ro had an yearly income of 633,000 RON (138 thousand euros). This amount equals approximately 43 million HUF, which is the amount received from the Foundation Határok Nélkül a Magyar Sajtóért (Foundation for Hungarian Media Without Borders) as well. The existence of the opinion portal Főtér.ro depends completely on such support.
Főtér is not enlisted on the Romanian audit page, Trafic.ro, thus we lack data on their traffic, but we assume that their traffic is not bigger than that of local portals such as uh.ro, szatmar.ro or erdon.ro. In our article we placed them on the fourth position given that they address regional rather than local issues, and as a consequence, in our view, their traffic is similar to that of „bigger” portals.
According to our calculations, in 2016 the total income of the Media Index Association, the publisher of Transindex.ro was totalling 497,000 RON (108,000 EUR). 60% of its income, namely 20 million HUF (64,000 EUR) came from the MVM Zrt. and from Szerencsejáték Zrt. Truth be told, the situation is a bit more complicated than that, as besides the association which is the publisher of the portal, there is another media company behing Transindex.ro, the Media Net SRL, which last year had an income of 208,000 RON (45,000 EUR).
Even though for Progress Foundation, the publisher of maszol.ro the main source of income is still government funding coming from Bucharest via DAHR, in 2016, one quarter/one third of the foundation’s total income, namely of 20 million forints, was made up of also 981,000 RON (214,000 EUR) coming from Szerencsejáték Zrt.
We lack data on the 2016 income of Udvarhelyi Híradó SRL as the yearly financial report has not yet been uploaded to the website of the Ministry of Finances. But according to data from 2015 one third of its its yearly income of 17,3 million RON (3,8 million EUR) came from Határok Nélkül a Magyar Sajtóért Alapítvány (Foundation for Hungarian Media Without Borders) which granted a financial support of 392 million HUF (1,3 million EUR).

Easy money leads to vulnerability

This is how the most important three to four Transylvanian Hungarian online media outlets – to a bigger or smaller extent – are financed by Hungarian public money.
This is „easy money” because, according to our informations it is sufficient to hand in a one or two page application. This also means that the applicants don’t have to invest any energy in marketing, in commercial sales, in writing applications, overall less energy and money is invested in operating a media outlet as business.
But this creates advantages only on the short run: on medium and on the long run the business knowledge and the professional networks weakens, and the media company becomes increasingly vulnerable. In consequence, if above mentioned financial support terminates, some portals might be facing a difficult economic situation.
But you should also spot the irony here: these portals are rivals, in January 2017, maszol.ro and transindex.ro had a public skirmish regarding their audience numbers.

There is censorship, but there is no propaganda. For now

By today it is clear that (self-)censorship in the Hungarian media in Transylvania is an everyday practice, and if a journalist or editor deals with a politically sensitive issue, it will have consequences. But up to now the anti-refugee propaganda was not prevalent, publishing defamatory articles about György Soros and committing character assasination is not common practice either.
But it is still not known whether this will change with the upcoming parliamentary elections taking place in Hungary. What we do know though is that in the recent past a Ministerial Commissioner has been appointed and has the task of convincing more and more Hungarian citizens living outside the border of Hungary to vote.

„We are not forbidding anything, at worst, we debate”

„(…) we are not misleading our readers, nor our colleagues: we stand by the values we represent, there is no unbridgeable contrast between the owner (the Foundation) and what we believe in. Preventing anything, especially the influence of Hungarian politics is not something we should be doing” – said László Szőke, the managing director of the Foundation owning the Udvarhelyi Híradó SRL when answering the questions of Átlátszó Erdély related to preventive strategies regarding the political influence of the Hungarian Government on the published content.
According to Szőke „speaking in general about the influence of Hungarian politics is too broad and vague and means nothing. At most, certain issues, topics, messages might be filtered by the content director and editor in chief: but a material gets published following a professional debate ending in consensus, but which cannot go against the editor’s will.
Self-censorship is present to the same extent as it is present in the case of Átlátszó or Index: at our group of portals there is agreement in terms of accepting the values that are determined by our minority status and to which our colleagues also adapt to (otherwise, they wouldn’t have joined us!) and yes, how Hungary relates to us, Transylvanian Hungarians is also part of it. How the political situation in Hungary affects us will be of course dealt with on our portals, because that makes total sense. We are not standing in the way of anything, at most, we are debating. And we do not agree that a portal should have an editor-in-chief who is too obeying.”

„Our supporters have no influence on us whatsoever”

The editor-in-chief of Főtér.ro, Attila Zsolt Papp told us: „I would like to make an apparently small, but important distinction right at the beginning: the Foundation Határok Nélkül a Magyar Sajtóért (Foundation for Hungarian Media Without Borders) is not the owner of the Erdélyi Médiatér Association (Transylvanian Media Space Association) which is the publisher of Főtér, but it is its financial supporter: this means that it is not the Foundation which created a platform, but a Transylvanian Hungarian mediaproject seeked and found financial support which was granted by the Foundation. We are not receiving financial support automatically, but based on an application that we hand in every year; also, we are not part of any mediaportfolio related to the Foundation.
This practically means that our supporters have no influence on our editorial principles: it is the editors who decide on the content that is to be published and this is quite visible when browsing through our archive. In the past three years I have not sensed any kind of political pressure or attempt to interfere with our materials (Just as a reminder: during the 2014 Parliamentary elections Főtér has already been running for four months and for now there are no signs that this would change in the future. Besides, this is also my personal undertaking: as editor-in-chief I am not willing to accept any interfering in the work of the portal and its content- and this will not change.”
We also addressed our questions to the president of the executive board of Progress Foundation, the publisher of maszol.ro, Nagy-Debreczeni Hajnalka, but she did not give us a meaningful answer. Transindex did not react to our inquiry.
Sipos Zoltán
The author of this article used to work at Transindex until November, 2015.

Translation: Etelka Tamás-Blaha

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