Hungary's clientelistic media system

Abstract

Hungarian society, including the journalism community, has for long been divided along major ideological cleavages. Different groups of journalists have advocated different – and often contradictory – professional roles, particularly as regards their relationship to political elites. Journalism culture, including the nature of interactions between journalists and politicians, has been largely shaped by foreign models. As a result, the recent history of journalism in Hungary can be divided into four periods, including Sovietization/Stalinization until the late 1980s, Americanization/Reithification from the late 1980s until the late 1990s, Italianization/Berlusconization in the 2000s and Russification/Putinization in the 2010s. This paper explores interactions between journalists and politicians in the context of these four periods, arguing that – apart from short periods when most journalists sought to achieve professional autonomy vis-à-vis political elites – this relationship is best described as a clientelistic one with many journalists behaving as clients and many politicians as patrons.

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