Outlets are vanishing, a historic left-wing paper teeters on the brink and a new row over media interference erupts
BUDAPEST – Hungary’s media and press landscape is undergoing its most seismic and turbulent upheavals in over a decade.
Following the defeat of Viktor Orbán and his the Fidesz party in April, a heavily centralised media empire constructed under his administration since 2010 – the Mediaworks conglomerate – has begun to implode as lucrative state-funded governmental contracts dry up.
Simultaneously, the historic shift has triggered the collapse of century-old opposition outlets, while the new Tisza government aggressively recruits prominent commercial journalists to staff its new state apparatus.
A key pillar of Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s strategy has been recruiting mainstream media professionals, including several prominent journalists and spokespeople from commercial broadcaster RTL.
