Description: The following is a day through the lens of a Hungarian citizen exposed to Viktor Orbán's increasingly powerful political media machine.
The Economist has recently made a visualization showing the alternative reality constructed by the Kremlin’s media through the lens of a Russian citizen who is surrounded by this reality on any given day. The Russian authorities have indeed supercharged their repression of independent media and their pro-war propaganda following February 24. But state-controlled highly manipulative media ecosystems are not unique to Russia, not even within Europe.
While authoritarianism in Hungary is not as developed as in Russia, Hungary has seen one of the steepest declines in media freedom over the past decade, characterized by the surveillance of independent journalists, widespread taxpayer-funded propaganda campaigns , as well as the gradual buyout of struggling independent outlets and the concentration of more than 77 percent (in terms of income) of the news-focused media in pro-Fidesz groups such as KESMA, a conglomerate controlled and directed by the gove
The following is a day through the lens of a Hungarian citizen exposed to this.