January 28th, 2012

Hungary tumbles down press freedom rankings

Hungary has dropped dramatically in an annual press freedom index after introducing media laws that have provoked criticism across Europe. But European Union countries continued to dominate the top places in the list.

Under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s leadership Hungary slipped 17 places to 40th in the rankings, compiled each year by the campaign group Reporters Without Borders. Yesterday Vaira Vike-Freiberga, a former president of Latvia who is leading the EU’s independent high level group on press freedom, said the Hungarian press suffered from an “extraordinary concentration of power”

Topics
Share
Comments
The All Hungary Media Group is firmly committed to freedom of expression and therefore applies a mostly "hands off" approach to comment moderation. Comments left by readers represent their own views and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of the staff, editors or owner of the All Hungary Media Group, who nonetheless reserve the right to remove comments that are off-topic or which moderators consider to constitute "hate speech." Also note that in order to prevent spam we generally close entries off to comments several days after publication.

7 Comments

  1. KlubRadio says:

    No matter how much it rains, the Viktorites will
    tell you the sun is shinning. Oh, well, I am sure
    it’s all political.

  2. Zsolt says:

    “Under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s leadership Hungary slipped 17 places to 40th ”

    USA is at 47th :)

  3. Paul says:

    @Zsolt

    Civilised people would be ashamed.
    (Quote:Vike-Freiberga warned that a government appointed authority that nominates the heads of public broadcasters, interprets regulations and imposes fines, still had too much power.)
    But you are apparently not. A true democrat wants to climb up on the list….not sink down.

    • Cogito says:

      Oh, Paul, you are so worried … :)

      I would suggest, there is a miracle in progress! All this terribly oppressive government controle of the media, yet all this hate-filled garbage and disinformation is freely published and distributed for common consumption. Immagine… (but you can’t).

      A true democrat does not lie …

  4. David says:

    @Zsolt. Seriously, what country in the world compares themselves to the U.S of A. They have a terrible record on many fronts and certainly they are not showing the way on media freedom. It is Europe that is showing the way. Another Orban anti-democracy and anti-Europe policy.

    • Cogito says:

      Hmmm yes … freedom … the EU kind: you are free to do what we tell you to do. Don’t you just love this reasoning…? :)

  5. woorry says:

    democracy and press freedom is just pretexts everybody knows that those who robbed Hungary SMELL IMF MONEY and want to come back to fill the pockets

    The problem is real in the private media:
    E.g. origo.hu censors comments arbitrarily without leaving the headers of the comments, or giving a reason, or notifying the comment writer