Across too many EU member states, press freedom is weak, faltering or in decline with little comment and less action from the EU’s leaders or the European Commission. And in neighbouring member states, including applicant countries like Turkey, the EU is failing to tackle substantive attacks on the media.

In Hungary, the independence from political interference of the country’s central bank, judicial system, media regulation and more has been called into question as its government drew up a new constitution and regulatory approaches. This is now so bad that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Europe’s human rights watchdog – quite separate from the EU) is proposing putting Hungary on its monitoring list. If it does, Hungary will joning Bulgaria as the two EU member states on this list of shame. Yet where are the EU’s leaders? More concerned on the whole with whether Hungary’s central bank is genuinely independent than whether a core element of political and economic accountability, a free media, is under attack.

A similar picture can be seen in Greece. As the ferocity of the economic crisis, and the measures imposed by the EU’s Troika, tear at the fabric of Greek society, media freedom is deteriorating – from a position that was already weak by EU standards. Journalist Kostas Vaxevanis, winner of this year’s Index Press Freedom Award, was prosecuted in 2012 for publishing the so-called Lagarde list of Greeks who have Swiss bank accounts, and may be evading tax as a result. Having won his case, Greek prosecutors rapidly announced a retrial, due this June – which if he loses will see Vaxevanis jailed. This case is ignored in Brussels. When Index and its international partners wrote to Commission president Barroso, he delegated the reply to a junior official who wrote in a letter to Index this January that the case had been positively resolved but the Commission would keep a careful watching brief. This dismissive ignorance would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.

Meanwhile, across the EU’s border, Turkey’s government is attacking media freedom with ever more brazen impunity, something Index recognised by putting Turkey’s imprisoned journalists on its press freedom Award shortlist this year.Turkey now stands ahead of China and Iran in the number of journalists it has jailed, while other journalists week by week lose their columns, their jobs, are censored by editors or owners or have learnt to self-censor. The EU is in – slow and lengthy – membership negotiations with Turkey. Any such candidate state is meant to meet basic standards of democracy including a free and fair press before talks start. So where is the EU and why has it not suspended talks until Turkey stops attacking the cornerstone of its democracy – the media?

Going North to the UK, there is chaotic disarray as British politicians attempt to establish a new system of press regulation in response to the phone-hacking scandal. The cross-party consensus on the proposed new regulator oversteps a crucial press freedom red line, with MPs voting on detailed characteristics of a new regulatory system. The bulk of the press has rejected this new approach – one that would impose exemplary damages for those not joining its ‘voluntary’ regulator – something the European Court of Human Rights will doubtless be called to judge on if the new regulator goes ahead. The Telegraph, Daily Mail, News International and others have proposed a different form of ‘independent’ regulator – one that gives them a veto on core appointments, an industry own-goal where genuine backing for a truly independent regulator would have given them the moral highground. It’s a shambolic mess – parliament showing itself careless on press freedom, and the UK apparently incapable of designing a tough, new regulator that is genuinely independent both of politicians and the press.

Where is the EU in all this? Mostly still ever-focused on the euro crisis. Senior EU leaders are starting to worry about the vertiginous loss of political trust in the EU across most member states, but showing little concern for a key element of European political systems, a free press. European Commission Vice-President Nellie Kroes did establish a High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism. But while its report had some welcome recommendations, the Group, rather anachronistically failed to begin to address and embrace the freedoms of the digital age where we are potentially all reporters and publishers.

On this World Press Freedom Day, it is time that the EU remembers its roots in democracy and freedom of expression and starts to hold its members – and candidate countries – seriously to account wherever press freedom is under attack.

Tunisia: Press faces repressive laws, uncertain future
Egypt: Post-revolution media vibrant but partisan
Brazil: Press confronts old foes and new violence

Photos: Shutterstock

The post World Press Freedom Day: Is the European Union faltering on media freedom? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The new constitution put an end to liberal democracy in Hungary. It was pushed through the parliament without any public discussion by a populist prime minister, who used his party’s super-majority to rush the legislation,  passed in only few weeks last spring.

Hundreds of controversial new laws — including the ones on media — have been passed since the Hungarian Civic Union, Fidesz, came to power in 2010. Their election has led to the elimination of many of the checks and balances in the democratic system. The government has ignored or rejected criticism from the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. More recently US State Secretary Hillary Clinton raised serious concerns about the transparency of the government, the independence of judiciary, the protection of individual liberties and press freedom in a letter personally addressed to the prime minister.

On the evening of 2 January protests, the state-owned television station m1 showed lengthy scenes from an exhibition glorifying moments of Hungarian history, and broadcast live from Orbán’s gala at the Opera House. Apart from a brief sequence showing policemen gathered in a nearly empty street near the demonstration, protesters were mostly ignored.

State media outlets are firmly under government control. To many this was confirmed when the image of former chief justice Zoltán Lomnici, who has openly criticised Orbán, was blurred during a TV broadcast in December. This incident triggered a hunger strike of a group of journalists and activists and a movement for a honest public service reporting was launched. The protest has been ignored by the omnipotent regulatory Media Council which has five members, all nominated by Fidesz. In fact, just before Christmas they decided not to re-new the license of the only remaining critical talk radio station.

In recent weeks there has been a major development though: the Constitutional Court declared elements of the new media laws unconstitutional, including the obligation of journalists to name their sources. The court also ruled that print and online media should not be subject to the new laws or the supervision of the media authority as of 31 May. Nevertheless, most of the provisions which were heavily criticised by international organisations, including Index on Censorship remained untouched.

Hungary still has a vibrant blogosphere, several good news portals and social media now reaches more and more of the country’s citizens. Thanks to the growing influence of online outlets, media pluralism has not disappeared and can never be totally eliminated. At the same time, the space for public debate has significantly diminished and critical media outlets in Hungary will have to survive by navigating through icy waters.

Sándor Orbán is the director of the South East European Network for Professionalisation of Media

The post Hungary faces squeeze on freedoms appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The post Hungary: Watchdog takes away frequency from opposition radio appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The pair, Balázs Navarro Nagy and Aranka Szavuly, both union officials, are protesting against the blurring out of the features of a prominent judge in a news broadcast last Saturday. The face of Zoltán Lomnici, the former president of the country’s supreme court, was digitally removed from a news report despite the fact that he was standing directly next to László Tőkés, a Romanian Euro MP of ethnicity who was his co-host at the press conference. Mr Tőkés, a prominent ally of Hungary’s ruling populist-conservative Fidesz party, was quoted extensively in the story.

Picture: www.index.hu

Picture: www.index.hu

Mr Lomnici, whom Fidesz last year chose not to reappoint for a second term as chief justice, said the use of the technique, normally used to protect the identity of people facing criminal charges, as “the most serious infringement of press freedom in the past 20 years.”

While it has not been suggested that the blurring out of Mr Lomnici from the report was politically motivated — television insiders suggest personal differences between Mr Lomnici and senior management at one of Hungary’s public television stations are to blame — the case does highlight a decline in ethical standards at Hungary’s public broadcasters since the passing of a widely criticised new media law and the reorganisation of public broadcasting last year. In one notorious case last year, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a French Green who is a prominent critic of the media law, was shown dodging a question relating to allegations about his private life in a news broadcast on Television. It later emerged that the footage had been cut to hide the fact that the Euro MP had in fact answered the question at length. The reporter on that story, Dániel Papp, was later promoted to head of news at Television.

The union activists are also protesting against the subsequent handling of the affair: after a swift investigation, the agency in charge of public broadcasting announced it had issued reprimands to three employees, without naming them. It was later reported that the three were the story’s reporter and editor, as well as the news programme’s duty editor. The activists say the three were following a standing order not to show Mr Lomnici in the news, and have pledged to continue their hunger strike until those responsible for that order have been identified.

In a statement today, the public broadcasting agency said it would be “patient” in its actions towards hunger strikers. “For now, we are not considering dismissal, because we have no wish to create a martyr out of someone … who is showing signs of losing his sense of judgement,” the agency said in connection with Mr Nagy.

Hungary has faced growing criticism from European governments, the US and NGOs over the past year because of its new media law. The law established a media supervisory authority whose board, appointed by the government for a nine-year term, has the right to mete out swingeing fines for ill-defined offences such as “breaching human dignity”. Critics say the threat of being fined under the law has already had a chilling impact on press freedom.

PLUS: Read Mike Harris on “Hungary – How Not To Regulate The Press“

The post Hungary: airbrushing row highlights media law failings appeared first on Index on Censorship.

In Macedonia a popular joke recounts they no longer get progress reports from the EU, but stagnation reports. The country’s name has been a roadblock to EU membership since 2005; the Greeks fear ‘Macedonia’ implies territorial ambitions on its northern territories, for ordinary Macedonians it is a matter of intense anger their southern neighbour blocks their entry into NATO and, more importantly, the EU. The Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski channels this anger into nationalist fervour. A new 92-foot statue of Alexander the Great dominates the centre of Skopje. Neo-classical buildings rise from Skopje’s particularly bleak architecture – the old town was flattened in an earthquake in 1963. Amidst this change, the Prime Minister has started his third term. Ordinary Macedonians identify with his ordinary man who lives in a small flat rather than his official residence, and rejects ostentatious shows of wealth.

Yet, in his third term, Gruevski is turning stagnation into regression according to the 2011 EU Progress Report on media freedom and the report of the OSCE Special Representative on Freedom of the Media. On 17 – 18 November, Index on Censorship joined an International Partnership Group on Macedonia to investigate these concerns.

Straight after the election, a new broadcasting law was rushed through that added 6 new members to the broadcasting council. There was no consultation. The president of the council, Zoran Stefanovski, only found out when the bill was in parliament. In all it took 70 hours for the law to pass. Every single one of the new members of the council were selected by the ruling coalition group in Parliament (VMRO-DPMNE). We spoke to the president of the broadcasting council in Skopje. He is furious and thinks the new members were added to block any decisions adverse to the government. Since these changes were made, the council is in deadlock.

Beyond rewriting laws, the government uses its influence in other ways. The Macedonian government is one of the largest spenders on advertising in the country. One estimate is the state spends an estimated 0.4 – 1.5 per cent of its budget on advertising, which if applied to the UK would be the total cost of Accident and Emergency hospital care or as much as Child Benefit. This huge purchasing power unfairly distorts the media market. There was evidence that it serves to disadvantage media outlets critical of the government. Whilst some of the advertising could be deemed in the public interest, a number of commercials feature the symbols or flags of the government parties according to Stefanovski.

Whilst private media continues to benefit from government largesse, “Macedonian television” the public broadcaster is under-resourced and almost entirely reliant on parliamentarians for its income. Macedonian householders pay two Euros per month for their television licenses, around 11 per cent of its total income. Private advertising, limited to outside ‘prime time’ (thus much less valuable) accounts for a further eight per cent, with 72 per cent coming directly from an annually-renewable grant from Parliament. (p.22, ). The socialist opposition have proposed increasing the monthly fee to five to eight Euros, but this would still leave the broadcaster reliant on an annual grant from Parliament for over half of its income. That Parliament can effectively bankrupt the broadcaster at will, has an impact on its ability to challenge the government and opposition. From 2008 – 9 its budget fell by 4 per cent. The government should fix the licence fee to wages with the majority of the broadcaster’s income from this fee, if a top-up from Parliament is necessary it should be a fixed grant over the entire parliamentary term, rather than renewed annually. Macedonians told us about the blandness of state TV. And viewers are switching over: its market share has deteriorated from 16 percent in 2004 to just eight per cent now.

One law that does need rewriting is Macedonia’s defamation code. The country is highly unusual in Europe, not just that it still has criminal defamation on its statute books (France does too), but that it actually uses these draconian laws. In October, Focus journalist Jadranka Kostova was fined 18,000 Euros (five to six years’ wages for a journalist) for libel after she made supposedly defamatory statements about former Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki. Incredibly, more defamation cases reached court in Macedonia in 2010 than in England and Wales, which has a population 25 times greater. The majority of lawsuits were filed by politicians. MPs from the governing coalition were keen to suggest that the opposition were behind most of these (we received no evidence this was the case). MP Ilija Dimovski told us that his governing party would put in place a moratorium of defamation cases.

In meetings with our mission, the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs and Chief of Communications, all stated they were committed to action on criminal defamation by the end of this year. Yet, it was also clear that criminal defamation and the heavy fines of civil defamation are useful tools for politicians from all parties in silencing criticism they don’t wish to hear.

International pressure is moving the government on reform. The founding of a working party to discuss media issues in partnership with the Association of Journalists has at least opened dialogue. Macedonia is not the only European country where journalists are feeling the chill. From our meeting, the strong impression lingered that the Prime Minister Gruevski feels his country is being singled out. As reported last month, Hungary has a new media law, again passed by a new government with a large majority, which stifles press freedom. Worse still, the Hungarians wish to export their model. The European Commission is beginning to see there may be a problem – to stop contagion it must act on Hungary and remind Macedonia that entering the European Union is a privilege not a right.

The International Partnership Mission consisted of:

Index on Censorship, ARTICLE 19, Freedom House, International Press Institute, Global Forum for Media Development, Media Diversity Institute, Open Society Media Program, South East Europe Media Organisation and South East European Network for Professionalization of Media

International Partnership Group on Macedonia Mission Statement

The post Macedonia: media freedom sliding backwards appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Hungary is the only European state whose guide to their media law includes an entire appendix dealing with international criticism.

The country needed a new media law to replace outdated regulations enacted before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a second series of provisions in 1996. Yet in the interim, whilst politicians debated regulation, Hungary’s journalists did a disservice to their profession, by failing to provide a model for self-regulation. With reform on the agenda, the newly elected Fidesz government stepped in and imposed one of the most draconian media models anywhere in Europe. As the international partnership mission to Hungary (which Index on Censorship is part of) found, the new law is broad, uncertain and inconsistent with basic standards of media freedom.

The Hungarian government is keen to export its model of regulation – as a way of seeing off criticism from bodies including the European Parliament and OSCE. If it is successful, media freedom across Europe will be under threat.

Hungary’s model of “co-regulation” is a peculiarity. The new media law created the National Media and Infocommunications Authority which has statutory powers to fine media organisations up to €727,000, oversees regulation of all media including online news websites, and acts as an extra-judicial investigator, jury and judge on public complaints. It is portrayed as an arm’s length government agency. Yet Annamaria Szalai, the President of the Media Authority is a known Fidesz supporter and all five members of the Media Council were delegated by exclusively by the Fidesz majority in Parliament. Members of the Media Council serve a nine-year term (over 2 parliamentary cycles) so even in the event of a change of government the media authority will still be dominated by Fidesz delegates.

Co-regulation is neither statutory regulation nor self-regulation. Those bound by the Media Authority include the Hungarian Association of Internet Content Providers, all TV stations and major newspapers. All volunteered to enter co-regulation which allows the Media Council to rule on received complaints. Yet, there was little choice. For organisations that remain outside the code, the Media Authority can levy fines of up to €727,000 for breaches of the new national media law. Inside co-regulation, fines cannot be levied, but the grounds for censor journalists are exactly the same as the national media law — and both are broad and uncertain. Hungary has forced the press to internalise a code that is far stricter than in other European countries.

One of the strongest provisions is that media owners should be “fit and proper”. In Hungary under Articles 185 – 189 of the new law, media owners who have previously been the subject of complaints upheld by the Media Council cannot bid for further licenses. Whilst it’s fashionable to suggest such provisions in the UK after phone-hacking, the result in Hungary is chilling. Journalists told our mission that media owners are keen to avoid any possible transgressions of the law and their contracts of employment are being edited to include reference to the new law.

Miklos Haraszti, the Hungarian former OSCE representative on freedom of the media is damning: “It is outsourcing media censorship to the owners.”

Protecting the audience

Article 4 (3) The exercise of the freedom of the press may not constitute or encourage any acts of crime, violate public morals or the moral rights of others – Freedom of the Press

Article 14 (1) The media content provider shall, in the media content published by it and while preparing such media content, respect human dignity – Obligations of the Press

Article 17 (1) The media content may not incite hatred against any nation, community, national, ethnic, linguistic or other minority or majority as well as any church or religious group – Obligations of the Press

At the heart of the new media law is a requirement to protect the audience from insult, threats to public morality, and hatred whether against a minority, or the majority. Its terms are broad and the grounds for investigation by the Media Authority uncertain. As Dr Judit Bayer points out, the law “may restrict any critical statement about any person or organisation”. Even defamation of religions is now an actionable offence.The media code embodies a wide set of protections for the audience. This includes an obligation for broadcasters to warn viewers before the transmission of “any image or sound effects in media services that may hurt a person’s religious, faith-related or other ideological convictions or which are violent or otherwise disturbing” (Article 14 – Requirements regarding the content of media services).

Typically, the most restrictive sections of national media codes (such as the UK’s Ofcom regulations) apply to media that exists in a limited spectrum – such as analogue TV or radio where there are a fixed number of possible stations. Hungary’s code applies to any for-profit media, whether within a limited spectrum, in print, or online.

The mission raised with the Media Council’s President the possible imbalance between the positive obligation Hungary has to protect freedom of expression and the breadth of the grounds for complaint under the media code. Annamaria Szalai was keen to emphasize that ‘not a single forint’ of fines have been levied to date. This is of cold comfort to journalists writing on controversial matters, where a single complaint to the Media Authority could mean the end of their career.

Protection of sources

At the same time, the government’s new media law initiated measures that remove protections for journalistic sources, which the mission found to be incompatible with European law.

Even under Communism, the 1986 Press Act allowed the denial of testimony for journalists. Article 6 (3) — Freedom of the Press — contains a worrying revision to this allowing journalists to be forced to reveal their sources “in order to protect national security and public order or to uncover or prevent criminal acts”. Whilst there is a public interest clause, as the European Court of Human Rights has found in past cases, the protection of journalistic sources is taken very seriously and the “public order” proviso is highly unlikely to pass this threshold.

Tamas Bodoky, the founder of investigative website Atlatszo.hu is currently facing the possibility of 5 years in prison for refusing to reveal the source of a leak to his website. He has been questioned by the police who told him he had to reveal his source. He alleges that his home was entered without a warrant. Bodoky is prepared to take his case to Strasbourg — in the meantime, a hard drive storing the contents of his website has been seized by the police.

Hungary’s new media law allows individuals to take action against journalists and online content for non-criminal offences through co-regulation. With media owners likely to discipline or sack journalists who attract complaints, we can see that co-regulation is likely to deliver the privatisation of state censorship. With partisan reporting on the rise to curry favour with the government — for example, see this TV report on MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s criticisms of the new media law that gratuitously made reference to past allegations —  journalists were keen to emphasize to our mission that the independence of the media is under serious threat.

Hungary has pushed back on press freedom in the face of widespread criticism but little action from European institutions; the real concern is that their model may be exported.

Mike Harris is Head of Advocacy for Index on Censorship

HungaryMission Statement

The post Hungary: How not to regulate the press appeared first on Index on Censorship.

KlubRadio is one of only a handful of political talk radio stations in Hungary, the other of which are mainly pro-government. Over the last 10 years KlubRadio has been a consistent proponent of liberal values and, since the right-wing Fidesz Party came to power last year, the station has been relentlessly critical of the government’s policies. The station’s most famous presenter Gyorgy Bolgar, for example, hosts a daily programme called “Let’s Discuss It” in which generally left-leaning listeners call in and lament the direction the country is heading. The eclecticism of the programming — with almost 40 different programmes each week covering all aspects of public life — along with its emphasis on participation has made the station enormously popular: the average number of listeners on weekdays, for example, is between 200,000 and 400,000.

Despite these figures, KlubRadio now faces closure. In February the KlubRadio’s license at 95.3MHz expired, requiring the station to enter into a new competition for the frequency. In June, however, the Media Council quietly introduced a new system of frequency licenses. The new tender for 95.3MHz is now explicitly for a ‘music radio that presents some local information and values’, with maximum points being granted to stations with over 60 per cent music and 25 per cent local news content. Since KlubRadio consists of about 75 per cent speech on matters of national politics, it is now practically impossible for it to win the competition in its current form.

While there is nothing intrinsically unfair about attaching conditions to broadcasting licenses, the composition of the new tender seems strikingly counter-intuitive. The majority of Budapest frequencies are currently given over to music stations, with only a handful hosting talk radio stations. Any consideration of pluralism and diversity clearly therefore demand that licensing conditions be composed in favour of the latter. The Media Council has dismissed these complaints as “ridiculous”, claiming that they betray a lack of understanding as to the economic realities of commercial competition. But what economic sense does it make to reject a station that attracts 300,000 listeners a day in Budapest alone and which inspires passionate loyalty amongst its followers?

KlubRadio’s current difficulties are indicative of a more fundamental problem with the media law reforms. Act LXXXII confers unprecedented regulatory power on the five members of the Council — such as the power to revoke licenses or impose fines of up to 700,000 (approximately £610,000) for “unbalanced coverage” —  all of whom are affiliated to the same governing party; indeed, the current chairperson is a former Fidesz MP and a long-term confidante of the Prime Minister. One would, therefore, expect there to be carefully-defined procedural safeguards to prevent abuse. Yet as KlubRadio has discovered, there is generally no way of challenging the Media Council’s decisions and hence no way of holding the powerful body to account. As the decisions by the Media Council are made within their broad discretionary authority, they are always “legal” and cannot therefore be questioned.

In this context it is unsurprising that Gyorgy Bolgar, along with the radio’s owner Andras Arato, believe that KlubRadio is being targeted for political reasons. Indeed, this is not the only regulatory decision made by the Council over the last few months which has prejudiced the interests of KlubRadio. In April 2010 for example, KlubRadio successfully applied to the ORTT (the Media Council’s predecessor) for another frequency at 92.2MHz. The contract for this frequency, however, was never concluded and eight months later the new Media Council refused to recognise it. Before introducing the current system, meanwhile, the Council issued provisional licenses to KlubRadio on a two-month basis. Such vacillation acted as a powerful deterrent to prospective sponsors and it was only via donations from listeners — who contributed €500,000 (£436,600) to the station —that KlubRadio was able to carry on broadcasting.

Media regulation is an exceptionally delicate area and the unfettered discretion granted to the Media Council, along with the complete absence of accountability institutionalised by the media laws, therefore has a number of pernicious implications for freedom of expression. Unless and until these expansive discretionary powers are revised, the Media Council remains free to arbitrarily issue and revoke licenses, impose fines, and make other decisions based on political inclination rather than rational consideration. This cannot continue. The international community has been far too timid in its approach to Hungary’s belligerent new government, and has so far done little to recognise the full implications of the media law reforms. With the laws now in effect, these implications are becoming clear to all. Yet as the broadcasters of KlubRadio are finding, it may well be too late to prevent independent forums of political debate being permanently shut down.

Charlie Holt is an intern on the law programme for ARTICLE 19

READ ARTICLE 19′S STATEMENT ON HUNGARY’S MEDIA LAW HERE

FIND OUT MORE WITH ARTICLE 19′s HUNGARIAN MEDIA LAWS Q&A

The post Hungary: independent voice faces closure appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The post Tens of thousands protest Hungarian media law appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The post Changes to Hungarian media law adopted appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The post Hungarian police shut down anti-government news portal appeared first on Index on Censorship.