Image: Monika Saulich
The Hungarian media expert Krisztina Rozgonyi, who emigrated to Austria, on the “Orbanisation” of the Hungarian media business, similar tendencies in Austria, the potential of government advertisements to lure people and the cardinal error of the future ORF law.
OÖ Nachrichten: Mrs. Rozgonyi, FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl praises Viktor Orbán about the green clover. What consequences would a policy à la Orbán have for the media landscape in Austria?
Krisztina Rozgonyi: Orbán’s “success” was the systematic, strategic and complex takeover and the bringing into line of the Hungarian media system. We’re not there in Austria yet. And hopefully we won’t get there either. In Hungary the situation is that the majority of the media is controlled either directly by the government or by interest groups. These are interest groups less interested in profit.
Rather?
More like political influence. They are key players in media cooptation, which includes control of the media regulator, public service broadcasting, and the strategic use of state advertising as a control tool. Especially the latter is very important. In Austria we have to see how far media freedom is in certain areas and what else could happen. The Austrian media market has many problems here in several areas.
This is a very bleak scenario given the status quo in Hungary. What must unpleasant, critical journalists and media expect in Hungary?
In Hungary there is the term soft censorship. The government doesn’t even need to hit or attack anyone because it has created an environment in which independent journalism has been utterly marginalized and basically ineffective. This has largely been achieved with state-funded instruments. Independent journalism in Hungary is almost exclusively online, and access is manageable. When it comes to forming opinions, RTL is the only commercial television channel that brings properly researched news. They are the only ones who are still influencing and effectively disrupting Orbán. In the print sector there are one or two magazines that are independent.
They say that Austria’s media are currently fictitious in 2014 during the “Orbanization” that took place in Hungary from 2010 to 2015. What does that mean specifically?
I would say that in the past few years in Austria we have seen several signs of imitation of the Hungarian model and that it was similar to this one in 2014.
How did this model actually work?
Once upon a time in 2010, a businessman and old friend of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán played a key role in inventing and executing a fraudulent plan. Persons loyal to him or blackmailed by him worked in state administration, authorities and public companies, which awarded their advertising budgets in public tenders to PR agencies and media buyers, who were also mostly connected to the same businessmen. These agencies funneled the money into media companies owned and controlled by the same businessmen and their close circle of friends through equity and trustees.
How much money?
Within this circle, billions of Hungarian forints in tax money circulated unchecked by anyone outside the system. Within five years this media was so starved that it was easy for the oligarchs to take over and control it completely.
In the future Media Transparency Act, there will be stricter rules for the allocation of public sector advertisements in Austria from 2024. Is this way correct?
It is important that there are currently no rules in Austria that guarantee a fair distribution of state advertisements to the media. At the European level comes the European Media Freedom Act. Article 24 says that funds must be allocated by public bodies according to transparent, objective, fair and non-discriminatory criteria and procedures. The new Media Transparency Act in Austria has little to nothing to do with the criteria for how these advertisements should be allocated. So this law is just one part, albeit a very important one. The beginning. Transparency is not a panacea because it does not show the systemic errors. In Hungary, you can also transparently track the placement of advertisements. And then what? It has no consequence.
Reputable media are accused of being bought by placing advertisements from the public sector by treating the advertisers in a “friendly” editorial manner in return. Keyword reporting of the “mainstream media” during Corona.
This raises the question of whether government listings should be allowed at all. This is currently an important question that is being hotly debated. Many media scientists argue that governments or ministries, if they want to communicate something, should make free announcements, for example on websites. When a government works really well, I wonder what the advertising is for. They should do their job and leave it to the free media to report on it. If the media, such as in the case of Covid, had sufficient funds available to report in detail and seriously, there would be no need to place advertisements. On the other hand, an absolutely quality-oriented support system would have to be installed. There is still a lot of room for improvement in Austria. In Austria, public sector advertisements are five times higher than state media funding. This is not sustainable.
The government’s draft of an ORF amendment to the law is currently the subject of heated debate. The newspaper publishers fear for their existence due to the additional opportunities offered by the ORF in the online area. Right?
We also have to look at this question on a global level. What happens to quality media in the system of uncontrollable platforming with all its disinformation? We have a gloomy picture that has just as bad an impact on private media as it does on ORF. That’s why I advocate that there should be as much state funding as possible for high-quality journalism. So that we can balance this disparity with YouTube and Facebook. With much higher funding for quality journalism, the ORF would no longer become a problem for private broadcasters and newspaper publishers. We could pursue media pluralism and expand online offerings.
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Krisztina Rozgonyi (Dr. jur. and phil.) was chairwoman of the Hungarian Telecommunications and Regulatory Authority. She has worked for the EU Commission, the OSCE and the World Bank, among others, and is a member of the RTR Advisory Board. Rozgonyi is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and teaches at the University of Klagenfurt.
Source: Nachrichten
