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Readers’ letter: Sargentini debate – Demolishing unbiased news from Hungarian media
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The vote regarding the Sargentini-report on the Hungarian government took place last week. I would like to emphasise the ‘government’ word here, as many MEPs did as well. Prime Minister Orbán started his opening speech and maintained an opinion that the whole report remarks, judges and stigmatises the Hungarian nation as a whole.
Hungary’s current legislative framework does not fully ensure an uncensored and unhindered press, according to Sargentini. What could give a better example of this than the debate and the outcome itself?
Before analysing the official statements and the press releases, we should take a look at the perfectly built publicity by PM Orbán on the debate. Two topics should be highlighted here – the parallel between the Soviet Union and the socialist era in Hungary in the 20th century and the immigration crisis.
A few self-evident statements of his speeches and releases:
“They ( EU/Sargentini) are sentencing the country who stood against the world’s largest army – the Soviets,” said Orbán, likely to suggest the 1956’s revolution and not WW2.
This remark during his opening speech was foreshadowed by his vlog announcement on the official social media site, where he stated the following: “the verdict has been written” implying the juridical custom of show trials of the stern communist-socialist days of Rákosi.
Also, a notable point to his authoritarian announcement, that he mentioned Brussels instead if Strasbourg – many suggest that this was not a mistake, rather an indication to the previous – and probably incoming – campaign against Brussels, as the objectification of the EU and the EP.
The show trial is a very important keyword to remember to which also came back later in the news created by government-close news sites and tv channels.
In advance, I would like to stress that this article will not place a judgement on the immigration crisis in Hungary or in Europe, neither will take part on any of the sides.
However, he did win at some levels at this debate, even though this has not had any effects on the actual outcome. He won because he could point to a part of the report questionable enough, and this was the question of migration.
These remarks gave him a weapon, easily useable with the well-known lines about Soros, Brussels, liberalism, socialism and national sovereignty.
These two components only added fuel to the fire. It is also considered that it took years to build the many layers of regulated lies on behalf of the government. In a well working state, the press’s job is to inform citizens about an unwarped reality.
Due to this expectation, people informing themselves only from a selected sample of journals, which advertises themselves as an unbiased and reliable source, will indeed assume that it must be reality – while they live in a malformed universe of Fidesz. Mostly because all the national tv channels (for most people the only form of cable channels), radio, printed and online media will publicise the very same news in the very same manner.
The main issue is that this manner is far from both unbiased or fair – even if we only see the news from the day of the debate and the following voting day.
Just because of the Way the EU is organized…as long as Judith Sargentini remains a Member of the EP…& as long as Viktor Orban remains Prime Minister of Hungary, JS will outrank VO in the European Union.