Hungary offers talks on controversial media law

Moves by the Hungarian government to tighten controls on the media and seize private pension assets are enraging its EU partners just as the country takes over the rotating presidency of the bloc.

By Nicholas RUSHWORTH (video)
News Wires (text)

AFP - Hungary on Friday invited regional security group OSCE for talks on a much-criticised new media law, a day before it comes into force and Budapest takes over the European Union's presidency.

"We invite those in charge of the media in the OSCE to Budapest for discussions on the issue," Gergely Proehle, deputy secretary of state for European affairs, told the German radio station Deutschlandfunk.

Although the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), which had warned that the new legislation "if misused, can silence critical media and public debate in the country," did not react, Germany hailed it as a positive development.

Calling it a "step in the right direction," German Secretary of State for European Affairs Werner Hoyer, told the Hungarian newspaper Nepszabadsag that the announcement gave rise to "optimism."

Hungary has come under intense fire over the new law -- the toughest in the European Union -- which would give a new media authority, headed by members of Premier Viktor Orban's Fidesz party, the right to regulate content of all media, broadcast, print or web-based.

It will also have the right to impose fines for material that "is not politically balanced", to inspect media equipment and documents and to force journalists to reveal sources in issues related to national security.

Radio and television stations can be fined up to 730,000 euros (976,689 dollars) for going against "public interest, public moral and order," or for broadcasting "partial information," without clearly specifying what constituted an infringement.

Amnesty International had also warned that the law could be hamstrung by "arbitrary application and political interference in the editorial policies of media outlets."

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Date created : 31/12/2010

Comments (2)

Hungary's Media Law

by Jim Quinn FIMechE (not verified) - 09/01/2011 - 15:16

Government MUST be subject to critical media comment, on behalf of the public, for otherwise it becomes a possible Fascist State, like Deutschland in 1933 or so, with insidiuous corrupt anti-rights Law not known to the public at the time, unless the individual suddenly finds themselves imprisoned without trial - as in Great Britain in the 1990's/early 2000's with its STALINIST drug-you-immediately Mental Health Acts from 1983 onwards, and which were not publicly criticised by the media, nor known to the general public.