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A senior editor of Hungary’s 60-year-old leftist daily Nepszabadsag, which was temporarily shut down by its owner Mediaworks on October 8, called an ad-hoc staff meeting to discuss ways to acquire the newspaper’s brand and secure funds for a fresh news outlet.
In an interview with the Reuters news agency, deputy editor in chief Marton Gergely said: “The Nepszabadsag editorial team wants to stick together and carry on working”.
Announcing the suspension of the newspaper, Mediaworks said the publication piled up significant losses despite cost cuts. It said it would revamp the organisation.
But the closure is the latest wrinkle in a shake-up of Hungary’s commercial media landscape, where businessmen seen as close to the right-wing government have steadily enhanced their market share, reported Reuters.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, since coming to power in 2010, has locked horns with foreign partners over reforms which critics say have eroded democratic checks and balances and weakened the independence of the media.
According to Gergely, Mediaworks’ business arguments are questionable since losses appeared relatively small over the last two years and journalists had taken two pay cuts of 10%.
“We believe the [closure] happened because of what we were doing,” Gergely said. “It is not necessarily due to the coverage of the past one or two weeks. The paper was shut down because they felt we could not be disciplined otherwise.”
In its final edition on October 8, Nepszabadsag reported that a minister in Orban’s government used a helicopter to fly to a wedding. Earlier it also reported that central bank Governor Gyorgy Matolcsy had employed his girlfriend in lucrative jobs for years.
Orban’s Fidesz party has said the closure is a “reasonable business decision” with a party vice chairman saying it was “high time” the paper shut.
According to Reuters, the news from Brussels is rather grim. The European Commission, which has clashed several times with Orban over reforms affecting the media, the judiciary and central bank, all expressed alarm about the latest development and said media freedom and pluralism were at risk in Hungary.
In a separate report, Bloomberg noted that the European Commission said it is “very concerned” about the halt in operations at Hungary’s most-widely circulated political newspaper over the weekend and is monitoring the situation closely.
“The commission is aware of and concerned about the suspension of the Hungarian newspaper Nepszabadsag,” Margaritis Schinas, spokesman for the European Union executive, told reporters in Brussels on October 10. “Questions have been raised on the reasons of this suspension and we are of course following the situation closely.
“We’re very concerned and we’re reiterating that principles of media freedom, pluralism and the protection of journalists are fundamental elements of the free and open society that this commission defends,” Schinas added. “We’re following very closely.”
President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, addressed Hungarian citizens directly. Schulz took to Twitter in Hungarian, writing: “Népszabadság’s sudden shuttering sets a disturbing precedent. I express my solidarity with the Hungarians protesting in Kossuth Square.”
As reported by The Hungarian Free Press online, the most touching gesture of solidarity with Népszabadság came from neighbouring Slovakia. A Slovak daily newspaper, Denník N, published a blank cover page October 10, bearing only the Hungarian-language headline: “We are with you, Népszabadság!”
Back in Hungary, the Democratic Coalition opposition party, led by former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, announced that the shuttering of Népszabadság was the final drop in the bucket. His party, which has four MPs, would permanently boycott all parliamentary hearings, committee work and question period from now on. The only exception will be when Fidesz requires a two-thirds majority to pass legislation, at which point, of course, DK will vote against the government on critical issues.
“If we don’t take this step, the Democratic Coalition will also become a cog in the wheel of the Regime of National Cooperation,” said Gyurcsány, using the term introduced by Fidesz when speaking about the Orbán government.
Meanwhile, Népszabadság’s editorial team is still holding out hope that they might be able to reason with Vienna Capital Partners’ Mediaworks company. On October 10, the paper’s editor, András Murányi, had a meeting scheduled with the publisher. The firm, however, cancelled the meeting last minute, claiming that one of the negotiators fell ill.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch described the newspaper’s demise as a new chapter in the government’s long history of contempt for media freedom.
“Sadly the Hungarian government has a well-documented history of contempt for media freedom,” the group said in a report posted on their website. “Soon after being elected in 2010, the Fidesz administration amended media laws to ensure it controlled appointments to the main media regulator and introduced vague content restrictions with the possibility of high fines, all of which have had a chilling effect on press freedom and triggered self-censorship.”
The post After the closure of Hungary’s major leftist daily appeared first on New Europe.