Mediahuis — Journalistic annual report — 2022 > ESSAY PRESS FREEDOM

As a journalist in the Netherlands, press freedom is like clean drinking water: it’s just there. Yes, you do know that independence and security can’t be taken for granted. Occasionally, reporters are physically attacked at protests or digitally trampled by an army of trolls. Sometimes an angry source starts a lawsuit or the government decides to make access to information a little more difficult. But the clean water continues to flow from the tap.

Before moving to Poland in 2019 to become a correspondent for NRC in Central Europe, I assumed that things would be pretty much the same by now in the post-Communist democracies. In Russia, China, Iran and many other places, there can be no independent media due to censorship, persecution and even mortal danger. But the countries I was going to write about had escaped from such dictatorship 20 years earlier and are now largely members of the European Union. Except for the vague notion of a lack of pluralistic press in Hungary and Bulgaria, I left with naive optimism about press freedom in the region.

Not only did I have no clue then, but the already dire situation has since become worse in Poland, Hungary and several Balkan countries. Journalists may not be imprisoned and newspapers are not banned, nor do autocratic regimes censor directly. Instead, the media are thwarted in much more subtle and creative ways. To restrict information, stifle public debate and propagate the incumbent’s agenda. But also to create imaginary enemies and polarise a society.

How does a democracy eradicate press freedom in six steps?

The public highway

Other than in the Czech Republic, public broadcasters and news agencies in Central Europe have never really broken away from the state. Broadcast controllers are politically appointed, talk shows are presented by politicians and news is in the service of the ruling power. This colours newsreels and current affairs programmes under liberal, left-wing, pro-European rule, but takes absurd forms under conservative-nationalist governments. Not a week goes by without Polish state broadcaster TVP portraying opposition leader Donald Tusk as a Nazi.

Tax money is also used to hurt private media. In Central Europe, the state takes a substantial share of advertising space. When the Polish government took office in 2015, it stopped all advertising in media it considered hostile. Ministries, institutions and state-owned companies cancelled all subscriptions to such newspapers. Instead, Catholic radio stations and propaganda magazines were showered with subsidies.

In 2021, the regime went a big step further in what it calls the “repolonisation” of the media: a conglomerate of almost all local magazines was acquired by the state oil company from a German owner. A local editor I spoke to feared that the ruling PiS party was “using public money to take over the private media to indoctrinate society even more, to make it easier to win the next local and parliamentary elections”. Soon after that, he and his reporters were out of a job.

The oligarch route

Whereas in Poland, with a population of 40 million and strong journalistic traditions, the curbing of the free press has happened in fits and starts, in Hungary it has been astonishingly fast.

Since Viktor Orbán came to power for the second time in 2010, he has allowed commercial media outlets to take charge. Newspapers, magazines, news sites, radio and television stations were in financial trouble after the economic crisis. Others found themselves in difficulties when not only the state but also companies that wanted to do business with it pulled their advertising. Struggling media were then “rescued” by Orbán-affiliated oligarchs and purged of any critical voices. Thus arose, I learnt from the editor-in-chief of the independent magazine HVG, “a monopoly on information by a small, corrupt elite that controls elections through the media and gives itself access to public money”. There are no longer any checks on power, as formerly independent media are forcibly turned into mouthpieces of power.

Omerta

A journalist is only as good as their sources, and many of those in Central European countries have gone silent. There are still leaks from powerful circles, but simple things like reporting on a school or hospital are no longer possible in Hungary. The idea of a fair hearing has become impossible. “Journalistically, our biggest obstacle is the lack of information. We never get answers to questions from the government, and other sources are afraid to talk to us,” says the Hungarian editor.

The legal path

Media laws are rewritten to restrict and make life difficult for publications. Court action for alleged libel and slander has increased exponentially. It’s so bad that this attempted silencing of journalists has been given a name: strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs. Sometimes brought by the state or a politician, but more often by institutions and individuals loyal to the government. In Croatia, the public broadcaster has brought cases against other media outlets. I spoke to Primoz Cirman, a freelance investigative journalist from Slovenia, who was facing 13 claims against him from one government-affiliated businessman at the time.

Nearly 100 such cases were pending against Polish opposition newspaper Gazeta Wyborza by the end of 2022. Even in front of the hijacked judiciary in Poland, the newspaper almost always wins, but at great cost – including for the taxpayer. The newspaper and its individual journalists are wasting a lot of money, time and energy that can’t be spent on quality journalism. And it’s about intimidation: these cases are designed to make journalists think twice the next time they’re faced with a controversial topic.

Complaints of libel or slander are deliberately used to obstruct journalists in their work

Espionage

As if it weren’t enough to clamp down on media companies, individual journalists are also being targeted. By persecuting them or branding them as enemies of the state, but also by bugging them. In 2021 the Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi revealed how every time he asked the government for a response, his phone was hacked with the Israeli surveillance software Pegasus. They read his emails and apps and were able to control his microphone and camera without his knowledge. “The only thing that stood out – in retrospect – is that several sources suddenly didn’t want to talk to me anymore. As if they’d been tipped off that it was now extra dangerous,” says Panyi. The intimidation was not only directed at him but was also meant to deter sources.

Auto-mutilation: self-censorship and activism

The sad thing is that previously independent media and journalists have themselves become worse off due to this enormous pressure. Some get caught up in the new editorial direction of a transformed paper or radio station and censor themselves. Not everyone can or will oppose it on principle.

Others – they are only human – react strongly to government interference and hostility and do the things they are accused of: they wage fierce opposition against those in power. Without sources and with less funding, it’s easier to fill pages with opinions than with investigation. Journalism becomes activism. It’s a grim impoverishment and politicisation that does no favours to citizens.