Hungary's political landscape underwent a dramatic transformation in 2024 following a major scandal and the unexpected emergence of a challenger to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – with social media playing a leading role in the process. Meanwhile, attacks on independent media outlets have intensified.

For years Viktor Orbán’s government has been highly successful in shaping the political narrative through direct and indirect control of much of the media market including the public service media, and by putting pressure on non-government-aligned outlets. But in February 2024 independent media outlets revealed how President Novák, a close ally of Orbán, had granted a pardon to a man implicated in a child sexual abuse case. Public outrage led to Novák’s resignation along with Justice Minister Judit Varga and social media influencers organised the largest street protests in recent years.

Social media platforms also facilitated the emergence of opposition leader Péter Magyar as a formidable challenger to Prime Minister Orbán. Magyar gave his breakthrough interview not to traditional media but to an independent YouTube channel, Partizán. Partizán is an increasingly influential independent voice on the media market. Since its inception in 2018, it has been experimenting with various formats and topics. Now it is among the top ten most used news sources in our survey. The interview with Péter Magyar garnered over 2.7 million views, extraordinary in a country of around 10 million people. Since that first interview, Magyar has leveraged social media to circumvent traditional media barriers, reaching hundreds of thousands directly through Facebook and YouTube livestreams and posts.

Pro-government media initially downplayed the Novak scandal. When this failed, they and pro-government influencers launched a smear campaign against Magyar that merged with European and local election campaigns and reached extraordinary proportions.¹

The ruling Fidesz party emerged as the EU's largest political advertiser in the five months before the European elections on Google platforms. Meanwhile on Facebook, the pro-government side spent €1m in five months on promoting posts discrediting Magyar, and a similar amount spreading narratives about ‘pro-war EU politicians wanting to start World War 3’.²

This campaign extended beyond social media. For example, the pro-government news portal Mandiner.hu published 139 articles featuring Magyar during just ten days in March, while the public broadcaster presented Fidesz campaign videos as ordinary segments in its news programmes. Billboards all over the country promoted Fidesz’s message that the opposition, led by Magyar, would ‘drag Hungary into war’. Fidesz ended up winning the European elections, but with a narrower margin than expected, and with Magyar’s new party placed second.

Independent media faced increasing pressure throughout 2024 and earlier stigmatisation of media outlets accepting foreign funding was taken to a new level. As the EU sued Hungary over the 2023 Sovereignty Protection Act, the newly established Sovereignty Protection Office validated press freedom concerns by accusing independent media of harming Hungary’s sovereignty, claiming they propagated ‘Western pro-war narratives’ about Ukraine. In June, the Office launched a ‘comprehensive investigation’ against the anti-corruption watchdog Átlátszó. The resulting report attempts to discredit independent journalism by labelling public information requests espionage and accusing independent journalists of being part of a ‘foreign influence network’.³ In August, the pro-government media accused 444.hu and international partners in the EU-funded 'The Eastern Frontier Initiative' of conducting ‘information warfare’ and of collaborating with foreign secret services. Additionally, police obstructed Telex.hu journalists covering a public campaign event in May, physically preventing them from questioning the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Prime Minister Orbán filed defamation lawsuits against media outlets for citing an Austrian newspaper interview where the managing director of the Spar grocery company claimed that Viktor Orbán had requested that a relative be allowed to invest in Spar’s Hungarian subsidiary.

In the media market, the third most widely used online news source, 24.hu, introduced a premium paywall section, joining independent outlets already operating paywalls successfully, including hvg.hu and 444.hu. Audience payments are becoming increasingly important as other revenue sources are drying up: state advertising is controlled by the government, and USAID (an important funder in the civil sector in Hungary) has been suspended by the Trump administration. Commercial broadcaster RTL closed its news portal rtl.hu, citing ‘business decisions’, while expanding its premium streaming service RTL+. In pro-government media, Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a private, yet taxpayer-funded institution, acquired majority stakes in the well-regarded but not especially influential radio station Inforádió and purchased the right-wing Mandiner newspaper.

Judit Szakács
CEU Democracy Institute

With no improvement in media freedom, overall trust in news has continued to decrease and remains the lowest among the markets surveyed (together with Greece). The trust scores of all the brands covered decreased, sometimes significantly; trust in the public broadcaster dropped 7pp from last year to just 23%.

Footnotes