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New Wednesday of New Times by Peter Uj.
I’m interested
Sixteen press freedom organizations wrote a joint letter to Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition, calling for:
substantially address complaints that the Hungarian government is manipulating the media market with state resources,
in contravention of the Statute of the European Union.
According to the letter, over the past ten years, the Orbán governments have systematically undermined the freedom and independence of the Hungarian press by directly influencing media market conditions and imposing competition rules. It highlights the market-distorting effect of public advertising distribution: “this is driven solely by the government’s goal of fattening pro-government media through ad spending and starving the independent press” rather than market logic, the number of readers or subscribers.
According to the letter, Index’s case is a perfect example of this: The newspaper generated virtually no public advertising revenue in the years leading up to the overall editorial termination, while it was the market’s leading online news portal. Its rival, pro-government Origo, by contrast, is one of the biggest winners of government advertising spending.
The authors of the letter then present the official complaints submitted to the European Commission, which in recent years have drawn the attention of Vestager’s office to the fact that they are interfering in the media market with prohibited state aid in Hungary.
“We are seriously concerned that the Commission has not responded to any of these issues,” they write, adding that the lack of a response at EU level further encourages the government to further decimate the independence of the press in Hungary with impunity, following the example of other central and southeastern European states.
The authors of the letter ask Margrethe Vestager to investigate the merits of the aforementioned complaints, “in defense of the right of the Hungarian public to free and diverse information.”
Organizations signing the letter:
- International Alliance of Journalists
- ARTICLE 19
- Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
- Association of European Journalists (AEJ)
- European Center for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
- European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
- European media initiative
- Free Press Unlimited (FPU)
- Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD)
- Censorship index
- International Press Institute (IPI)
- Trans-European Observatory of the Balkans and the Caucasus (OBCT)
- Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
- Society of Journalists, Varsó
- South Eastern Europe Media Organization (SEEMO)
- The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation
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