Hungary cracks down on warmongering media

Published 10 July 2024 at 17.28

Foreign. Media that engage in warmongering will be forced to account for their funding and may lose foreign support, according to new legislation that the Hungarian government is preparing.

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TwittraShare< p>Hungary has presented what it calls an “action program against war”, reports Reuters.

Within the framework of this program, political actors or media accused of spreading “war propaganda” will have to reveal their funding sources.< /p>

The aim is “full transparency”, according to Gergely Gulyas, head of the Hungarian Prime Minister's office.

The measure is mainly aimed at the media – political parties in Hungary have already been banned from receiving money from abroad.

The government will also have the power to block foreign funding and send the money back if it is used to finance “war propaganda,” according to Gulyas.

However, he does not specify how the government will determine what constitutes war propaganda. The Ministry of Justice is to develop a mechanism to determine whether a media channel engages in such activities.

Gergely Gulyas clarifies that the measure will primarily focus on funding from countries outside the EU. However, he claims that the EU itself is dominated by “war propaganda” focusing on the Ukraine war.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban recently undertook a “peace mission” that included visits to Kiev, Moscow and China. In the Ukrainian capital, he called for a ceasefire as a first step towards conflict resolution – a proposal rejected by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi.