Pro-Orban forces take over news channel, cancel a dozen shows
A television news channel is the latest casualty of the ’media war’ in Hungary: the new, pro-Orban owner of HírTV arrived in the studio on Wednesday, called a staff meeting and announced new, pro-Orban...
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A case study in Hungarian propaganda: this is how the pro-government media...
The pro-government media empire in Hungary has a special characteristic: when there is a very important message to push, they work in unison. The same message is spread by every website, newspaper, TV...
View ArticleAtlatszo received €109,000 in microdonations and €71,000 in income tax 1...
Atlatszo has been a target of the government-funded propaganda media since we published our stories about the luxury jet used by prime minister Viktor Orban and the yacht enjoyed by his friends. The...
View ArticleData visualization: this is how the pro-government media empire owning 476...
This week 476 media outlets became parts of the new Hungarian media holding controlled by pro-government forces. The name of the mammoth is Central European Press and Media Foundation (in Hungarian:...
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The government of Hungary spent €216 million on propaganda and fearmongering...
The Hungarian government spent 69.3 billion Hungarian forints (approximately €216 million at today’s exchange rate) on propaganda and fearmongering in the past eight years. Our infographics also reveal...
View ArticlePro-government propaganda outlets lost dozens of defamation cases in court...
Prime minister Viktor Orban often accuses independent media outlets of being ’fake news.’ However, numbers suggest that it is the pro-government propaganda outlets that are willing to lie for political...
View ArticlePropaganda is bad business: circulation of paper overtaken by pro-government...
Every single regional newspaper in Hungary is owned by pro-Orban forces today. However, being taken over by an oligarch and being turned into propaganda outlets is bad for business. The daily paper of...
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Journalism prize ’About poverty with dignity’ awarded, among others, to...
The Hungarian Anti-Poverty Network (Magyar Szegénységellenes Hálózat – MSZEH) held its award ceremony for its media prize called ’About poverty with dignity’ on Wednesday. The network founded the prize...
View ArticleHungarian government spent €48 million on propaganda in first three months of...
The government of Hungary spent 15.4 billion Hungarian forints (approximately 48 million euros at today’s exchange rate) on spreading its messages in the first three months of this year. The majority...
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Data visualization: this is what the pro-government news media looks like
According to our calculations 112 newspapers, online media outlets, outdoor advertising companies, radio and TV stations belong to the media empire serving the Hungarian government. These are the...
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Innovative ideas, growing challenges – Study on Eastern European media...
In the past few years a lot has changed in the media industry in Eastern European countries. It has become more and more difficult to compete with state-owned media and government propaganda, and to...
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Atlatszo turns 10 years old – journalists remember their favourite...
Ten years ago, on Independence Day on July 4, 2011, we launched Atlatszo, with no capital or investor, relying on the donations of our readers and with a single journalist. Our mission was to promote...
View ArticleNew report on Hungarian governmental influence in foreign media with...
The International Press Institute (IPI) publised a new report that explores the presence of Hungarian money invested into foreign media and the implications for the spread of Viktor Orbán’s “illiberal”...
View ArticlePro-government media lost ten times as many lawsuits as independent papers
We have requested data on the 2021 lawsuits for correction from the Metropolitan Court of Budapest in a public interest data request. According to the numbers, the largest pro-government media outlets...
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Pro-government media has lost nearly 400 lawsuits for correction in the past...
We have been tracking and publishing the number of lawsuits for correction for years: in 2017, pro-government media lost 53 cases, in 2018 109, in 2019 74 and in 2020 57 and 54 in 2021. We have...
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Opposition politicians suing dozens of government-aligned propaganda outlets...
The propaganda machine that the Orban government built up in the past eight years launched brutal character assassination attacks against prominent opposition leaders in the run-up to the April...
View ArticleProject of Atlatszo and Atlatszo Erdely awarded €19,000 by EU investigative...
A joint project of Atlatszo and Atlatszo Erdely (Atlatszo Transylvania) was funded in the inaugural round of the IJ4EU fund. More than 60 teams of EU-based journalist presented projects and 12 of them...
View ArticleState-owned energy company spent €17.3 million on advertising in two years
MVM Zrt. is the state-owned Hungarian energy group that has a monopoly over supplying electricity to customers in the country. Despite the fact that it has zero competition and customers have no choice...
View ArticleHungarian nuclear plant spent 7.2 million euros on advertising itself in two...
The Orban government built up a huge media empire that serves its interests and spreads its messages. This media group is financially supported by the advertising budget of state-owned companies. The...
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This is how politics distorts the advertising market in Hungary: threats,...
It has been widely known for years that the Hungarian government uses the allocation of state advertising to fund pro-government media, and thus those serve as key instruments of soft censorship. The...
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