media Archives - VSQUARE.ORG

Trying to muzzle Hungary’s top news site was a bad idea

A demonstrator wears a face mask during a protest for media freedom after the editor-in-chief of Index, Hungary's leading independent news website was fired, in Budapest, Hungary, July 24, 2020.Source: Bernadett Szabo / Reuters / Forum

One year after the pro-governmental takeover of the top Hungarian news site, Index.hu, its former staff members are thriving.

VSquare

23.07.2021

Szabolcs Panyi: I was hacked with Pegasus software

investigative journalism, media, Viktor Orban

Szabolcs Panyi, Hungarian journalist from the opposition website Direkt36. Source: András Pethő/Direkt36

Orban put me at the same level as a dangerous criminal – says Panyi, a surveilled Hungarian journalist and a member of the international team revealing Pegasus Project.

Eva Kubániová

19.07.2021

RSF: The dismal state of press freedom in V4 countries

media, media freedom

Scratched,Paper,Texture,,Old,Newspaper,Background

Source: Here/Shutterstock

In three of the Visegrad Four countries – Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia – press freedom is in decline, according to the World Press Freedom Index 2021 published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

VSquare

21.04.2021

Impérium AB – Database of companies and subsidies of Andrej Babiš

Andrej Babiš, finance, media

Graphics by Lenka Matoušková

Prime Minister Andrej Babiš embodies one of the most significant conflicts of interest in the modern political history of the Czech Republic.

VSquare

15.03.2021

A suspicious PR consultant and a selfie with Orban

media, Viktor Orban

Still from a film on official Viktor Orban page on Facebook, source: https://www.facebook.com/orbanviktor

Igor Janke, a partner in Polish PR agency R4S has been charged by the prosecutor’s office in a giant financial scandal. Just a few weeks ago, Janke and his R4S partners opened an office in Budapest.

Konrad Szczygieł

02.11.2020

Hungarian gov’t money, US advisor with Republican ties behind propaganda news site

media, propaganda, USA

The website Remix provides news in English on Central Europe, with a soft spin much alike Viktor Orbán’s agenda.

VSquare

23.10.2020

Hidden layers of the Visegrad

investigative journalism, media

Shutterstock/Fotophoto

A ’bad boys’ band in the EU; a playing field for politicians eroding democracies; or a venue of a competition between the US and China?

Anna Gielewska

05.10.2020

The honorable death of Hungary’s top news site

media, media freedom

index.hu

The most popular news site in Orbán’s Hungary was killed but the journalists keep on fighting

Szabolcs Panyi

26.07.2020

Bullet for a Slovak reporter

Jan Kuciak, media, media freedom

A memorial for Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová in Prešov, by Petinoh, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

More than two years after shocking assassination of Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, another Slovak journalist from the same newsroom faces a death threat. Data analyst Peter Sabo found a pistol bullet in his mailbox – informs editor-in-chief of Aktuality.sk, Peter Bárdy.

VSquare

26.06.2020

Pole and Hungarian brothers be. How Warsaw and Budapest use taxpayers’ money to build pro-government propaganda

disinformation, media, propaganda, public media

Graphics by Lenka Matoušková

With almost five hundred media outlets owned by a single pro-government foundation and hundreds of millions of euros of state advertising transferred annually to fund it, Hungary’s right-wing government has built Europe’s largest propaganda machine since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Warsaw follows in Budapest’s footsteps with a growing stream of taxpayers’ money funnelled […]

Attila Bátorfy

VSquare

Konrad Szczygieł

18.12.2019