The disinformation scene has become a tool of media capture

In mid 2024, Atlátszó, the Budapest-based centre for investigative journalism, was the first media outlet investigated by the Sovereignty Protection Office established by the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán. It justified its investigation by stating that Atlátszó is "a foreign-subsidised organisation with a significant proportion of its annual budget coming from abroad, according to the accounts published on its website". The office came to the conclusion that Atlátszó’s journalists were engaged in "intelligence gathering" on behalf of foreign countries.

"They tried to frame our journalism as some kind of foreign attack on Hungary," said Atlátszó founder and director Tamás Bodoky. "But we are working for Hungary and we are working for the citizens of Hungary and we want to publish everything in Hungary, in Hungarian."

Bodoky was speaking to a live audience at the Press under Pressure panel discussion in April 2025, held in Bratislava as part of the World Between the Lines festival in cooperation with The Eastern Frontier Initiative (TEFI). Also on the panel were the editor-in-chief of the Slovak daily Sme, Beata Balogová, and the director of the international think tank Media and Journalism Research Center, Marius Dragomir. 

Observers have long been vocal about one danger of the media capture model practised by Orbán: that it may serve as inspiration or a playbook for other aspiring autocrats in the region. 

"The danger is there and in fact it happened in Poland. Until the change in power, the former government was involved in a kind of copy-paste attempt to instil capture in Hungary," said Dragomir. 

In a joint research effort, he and his colleagues looked at what Orbán did after his victory in the 2010 elections. They found that his media capture model consisted of four components: first, he took control of the regulatory bodies appointed by the government to give licences to television and radio stations. Then he took over public-service media, firing numerous journalists almost immediately after the elections. Soon after, he started to direct state advertising money to media outlets that were friendly or could be co-opted. Finally, he bought the media. "He obviously couldn't buy media himself or through the government, so he used the oligarchic structures," Dragomir explained. 

"You don't need very impressive measures. He took over a very big part of the narrative in the Hungarian media in a legal way," he added. 

The media capture model was not invented by Orbán, but rather was inspired by the actions of the Putin regime in Russia and the steps taken by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, noted Beata Balogová. She admitted that she gets impatient when she hears foreign observers and diplomats saying that Slovakia, where the government of Robert Fico has been trying to apply its own version of a media capture model, is "doing OK", because "we are not Hungary yet". 

"It took Orbán a decade, while Robert Fico has ruled the country for a year and a half and look at what he has already done," she noted. By the spring of 2025, the government – which took power in late 2023 – had passed a law that dismantled the public-service broadcaster, removing its legally appointed director in the process and establishing a new regulatory body which is now headed by Ján Krošlák, the former spokesperson of Slovakia’s authoritarian-leaning prime minister of the 1990s. Vladimír Mečiar. It also features, among others, a known conspiracy theorist, Lukáš Machala, who is the right-hand man of the current culture minister. He is on record as stating that the flat-Earth theory should not be dismissed out of hand. 

In Slovakia, Balogová noted, the environment differs from Hungary because of the country’s experience under the Mečiar regime in the 1990s, during which independent media learned not to depend on money from state advertising. "We were forced from early times to build our own audience, which is not dependent on what the state gives us, and this protects us," she said. The main worry is that if Fico manages to rule for long enough, he might put sufficient pressure on private advertisers. 

Disinformation channels as tools of media capture

"All populist governments implement some sort of propaganda and it means that they deny journalists their status. They try to only talk to the pro-government, to the propaganda media," Bodoky noted. They deny critical journalists even the name, often calling them "liberal bloggers" or other labels. "They don’t say we are journalists," Bodoky noted. 

Orbán never resorts to personal attacks on journalists, Balogová said. "He is really an architect of power who understands that he has his people attacking journalists, so he does not need to do it," she noted. On the other hand, Fico often engages in personal attacks on journalists, addressing them with crude slurs and getting very emotional. "We can see that our journalism still has consequences for the government and they get nervous," said Balogová. "Even though Fico would like to suggest the media are not relevant, he cannot get the distance from us." 

The biggest challenge for the media is to maintain their role as gatekeepers. "We often react to what politicians are saying, which means they use our channel to multiply the messages they are sending out," said Balogová. 

The case of Slovakia shows another, more recently applied, element of media capture: the disinformation scene. The Fico government has been legitimising online disinformation channels, of which there are dozens in Slovak, not just by granting them access to press conferences and treating them as fully-fledged journalists, and often giving them exclusive interviews, but also via the use of public funds. From his prime ministerial reserve, Fico has supported organisations linked to Hlavné Správy and Hlavný Denník, two of the most prominent disinformation websites in Slovakia. 

While many government ministers refuse to give interviews to journalists from genuine news organisations, they frequently appear on disinformation channels, which are in turn being used not just as tools of pro-Kremlin propaganda but also as tools of media capture. It is a phenomenon that was observed in the American elections the first time Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, noted Dragomir. 

"Robert Fico has adapted to the things that these channels were saying," said Balogová. 

Media Freedom Act to be tested 

In 2024, the EU institutions passed the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), which is supposed to create a framework for member states to adopt laws that would prevent media capture at the national level. Bodoky does not have high hopes that the act will have much effect in Hungary, where the media is already captured. "The rules are meant to prevent the situation that has already happened in Hungary," noted Bodoky. 

He also expects the Orbán government to find a legal way to appear to implement the rules from the Media Freedom Act, while ensuring that they are not implemented in practice. 

Dragomir and his colleagues, working with the International Press Institute, last year released reports covering seven countries, including Slovakia and Hungary, to see how the law would affect media affairs in various countries. 

"This is a law that is probably the most advanced ever when it comes to media freedom," Dragomir said about the EMFA. "It really tackles the four pillars of capture. But I think in some places it's redundant. They missed the point of what is happening on the ground." 

He explained that Orbán-style media capture is about financial corruption, based on a group of people brought together by financial instincts and by financial interests. "And this is the thing that the European Media Freedom Act doesn’t tackle at the moment and which, I admit, is very hard to tackle." 

The biggest problem is that the EU regulation is enforceable, but it is a long process before the member states have to prove that the government has implemented it. "So enforcement remains a problem." 

The EU looks at regulations in a very formalistic way. But when national courts look at cases, they look at the spirit of the law, the circumstances, and intention. Yet the EU is not willing to look at the intention, noted Balogová. "We have seen it in Slovakia. When I expressed concerns about the public-service television in my conversations with diplomats, they said everything is in line with the law. But autocrats are not idiots. They can create laws and regulations that will look completely normal, but the spirit in which they execute them will be malicious," she noted. 

This is also a test of the European Union, said Balogová. "Until the EU changes its approach to enforcing any regulation, not just the Media Freedom Act, then it will be viewed as weak by these autocrats – and even by the population." 

In these bad boy cases, the EU is the only institution that has some tools at hand, noted Dragomir. One is access to EU funds, while another is the currently discussed possibility to propose the withdrawal of a country’s rights in cases of abuses of the rule of law. "That would be a big blow, and it will end the problem of unanimity that has caused many of the problems. So the EU has the tools and is now actually working towards implementing some of them."

What can journalists do?

"If you do not lose the audience, you have a chance to fight back," said Dragomir. In order to keep the audience’s attention, people in the media industry need to seriously think about how to do that. 

During a research project to interview users of social media in Romania, Hungary and Poland, Dragomir noticed that there is a disconnect.

"The connection with the audience is crucial, because at the end of the day when you don’t have the support of the government, you don't have funding from the government, the private sector in many cases is against you, the connection with your audience is the only way to fight back," he said.

Journalists need to insist on maintaining the quality of journalism, noted Balogová, and not look for easy ways out. 

"When the institutions don’t talk to you, you use anonymous sources, but when you don’t tell your reader who is telling you the information, the reader is more likely not to trust you," she said. Even if you know that a person will not respond to you, ask them your questions and show the reader that you are making an effort," she said. "We are the generation that can still make sure that journalistic rules survive." 

"Also, it’s very important not to adapt to the rhetoric and the tone of the voice that the disinformation sites or the politicians use. I’ve seen that also my commentators are more likely to use strong expressions, which inflame the whole public discourse," she added, asking: "How do you get back to normal if you allow the whole environment to change?"

Bodoky added that it is important for journalists not to let the hostile atmosphere get to them and become depressed. "And we have to work on exposing corruption. I always tell my colleagues we do not need to put out another story about how we are not foreign agents, but let’s find a good story about how corrupt they are and let’s prove that with very solid examples. That is the way to endure it," he concluded.

(source: TEFI)