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Protect Your Media - Lessons from Hungary · Save Democracy

• 0:04
  Welcome to Save Democracy.
• 0:06
  In the noisy world online where many of us increasingly get our news, there's
• 0:11
  something critically important to a functioning democracy that we can stop
• 0:16
  noticing and stop supporting, and it's the essential role of an independent
• 0:21
  media, and journalists are under attack all over the world Today we explore this
• 0:27
  issue with an exceptional guide, senior advocacy officer from the International
• 0:32
  Press Institute, Jamie Wiseman.
• 0:35
  With his focus on Europe, Jamie can also reveal what happened to the
• 0:39
  media in Hungary under the autocratic regime of Viktor Orban, which has
• 0:45
  great lessons, I expect, on how to spot media capture everywhere.
• 0:50
  But first, we go back to the essentials.
• 0:53
  Jamie, hello.
• 0:54
  Welcome.
• 0:55
  Hi, Katherine.
• 0:56
  Good to speak to you.
• 0:57
  Can we start with the why?
• 0:59
  Why is an independent media an essential part of a functioning democracy?
• 1:04
  Well, it's a big question.
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  It's one of the cornerstones, one of the absolute pillars of democracy
• 1:09
  and always has been since the establishment of modern democracies.
• 1:13
  So I think a free press and its ability to act independently and have
• 1:17
  a pluralism of sources is crucial for a healthy democratic society.
• 1:21
  At its most basic level, it just gives people reliable pluralistic
• 1:26
  information and creates a shared reality for everyone to live in,
• 1:29
  somewhere that's based on facts.
• 1:32
  And as you said in your introduction, we live in this increasingly overwhelming
• 1:36
  digital ecosystem for information, where independent media can provide a sober
• 1:41
  analysis, fact-checked information, and in many cases act as a sterilizer for
• 1:47
  disinformation and propaganda as well.
• 1:50
  I think as I see it, it, independent media also creates this forum
• 1:54
  for public debate, discussion, and the airing of ideas and
• 1:58
  opinions, in a democratic forum.
• 2:01
  The best of independent media is a crucial watchdog role as well in terms
• 2:08
  of investigating power, both political and business and military, and holding
• 2:13
  power to account as best it can.
• 2:15
  If we look around the world today, I think in a world increasingly occupied
• 2:21
  with conflict and war, in these kind of situations, independent media
• 2:25
  are crucial for both investigating the causes and effects and telling
• 2:28
  the stories of those most impacted.
• 2:30
  And in a context of climate breakdown, I think, yeah, I increasingly see
• 2:34
  independent journalism as playing a crucial role in investigating the
• 2:38
  reasons why this is happening and again, bearing witness and telling
• 2:42
  the stories and the impact on those most affected around the world.
• 2:46
  Even at the local level, where I live, the local press
• 2:49
  there, having it independent is crucial for local democracy.
• 2:54
  This is in Brussels for our listener, just so they're aware where you are.
• 2:58
  Yes, in Brussels, but I grew up in the UK as well and started
• 3:01
  my career in local journalism.
• 3:02
  And that connection of someone and where they live, to be able to read a
• 3:07
  local newspaper that's independent and operating freely for local democracy is
• 3:12
  crucial as well, and for that kind of connection to where you live and not
• 3:15
  just having everything coming from a national level or from social media.
• 3:20
  And then another fundamental, of course, is elections and giving citizens, the
• 3:25
  ability to make informed choices.
• 3:27
  That's another obviously basic one which can lead to change in
• 3:30
  governments as we just saw in Hungary.
• 3:33
  The stronger a free press, the stronger independent journalism, I think we see
• 3:38
  the stronger democracy and where it's more able to kind of hold power to
• 3:42
  account, democracy is more resilient.
• 3:44
  What's happening around the world to journalists and how they're under attack.
• 3:48
  It is this question of holding the powerful to account that
• 3:51
  makes them targets in the context of democratic decline.
• 3:56
  Why autocrats go after journalists.
• 3:59
  They don't want anybody questioning what they say and their version of events.
• 4:04
  So could we turn then to the level of threat in the world for journalists?
• 4:09
  Could you just give us a bit of an outline of what's happening globally?
• 4:13
  Sure.
• 4:13
  If we take the long view and we zoom out, then what we see is that the global level
• 4:18
  of press freedom overall in the last two decades has experienced a kind of a slow
• 4:24
  and often disjointed, but an overall downward trend which has affected levels
• 4:29
  of media and press freedom globally.
• 4:32
  And this dovetails, I think, with the decline in global levels of democracy.
• 4:36
  As we said, these two are inextricably linked.
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  And since the beginning of this century, as the number of countries
• 4:45
  around the world with democracy slowly has declined, then journalism and
• 4:49
  the free press also suffer with it.
• 4:51
  I think journalists and media are often the first targets
• 4:54
  of autocratic governments.
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  By silencing the journalists and media you can turn off the tap of
• 5:00
  information and then it's easier to go after the courts or civil society
• 5:05
  or activists or the opposition.
• 5:08
  So in terms of the most serious threats, we can break them down into
• 5:11
  a couple of different categories.
• 5:12
  The most fundamental and serious, of course, being the killing of journalists.
• 5:16
  And in 2025 we saw the highest number of killing of journalists globally
• 5:22
  since counting by organizations like my own, IPI, and others began.
• 5:28
  So we had over 125 journalists killed around the world and that
• 5:31
  was the second year on record that we've seen the highest figure.
• 5:35
  The driving factor behind that is, Israel's war in Gaza.
• 5:39
  So we've seen hundreds and hundreds of Palestinian journalists who
• 5:44
  are unable to leave Gaza killed in indiscriminate bombings, but also a
• 5:49
  number of targeted killings in which the IDF and the Israeli military have
• 5:54
  been identified as being responsible.
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  We've never seen before a situation in which for one year we have one
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  state or its military responsible for two-thirds of all killings of
• 6:06
  journalists around the world, which really puts into perspective how deadly
• 6:09
  that conflict has been for journalists.
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  So that's a very severe situation.
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  But outside that context, killing of journalists is still rife in large
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  parts of Central and Latin America, in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and
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  other areas in the Middle East.
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  So we're seeing figures rise, despite international law and international
• 6:31
  cooperation and information gathering.
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  These kind of crimes are increasing.
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  And what we see is it's not just killings, but also widespread violence
• 6:39
  against the press, which is having a chilling effect on journalism worldwide.
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  I would then say the second category is a long and expanded group of
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  legal pressures and threats against journalism, which would be the most
• 6:53
  obvious arrests of journalists.
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  Globally, there are still hundreds of journalists behind bars, many
• 7:00
  of them in countries like China.
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  In Russia, it's a really high jailer of journalists, particularly
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  those in occupied areas in Ukraine, in Iran, in Azerbaijan.
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  There are kind of flashpoints in different continents.
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  It's not a trend in one area of the world alone.
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  Then there's the kind of group I would say is old-fashioned censorship, legal orders,
• 7:20
  shutting down newspapers, shuttering of newsrooms, criminal investigations
• 7:24
  into editors, into journalists.
• 7:27
  There's another I would group as digital attacks and threats
• 7:30
  against journalistic data.
• 7:32
  So in here I'd put increasing threat from surveillance and advanced spyware
• 7:36
  tools like Pegasus and Predator, but also a kind of expanding commercial,
• 7:43
  network of companies that are selling advanced spyware tools to, to
• 7:46
  governments and intelligence bodies.
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  And this obviously poses a threat to private journalistic communications,
• 7:52
  but also to their sources as well.
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  Are they sold to them under the auspices of general safety and security policy?
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  Is there any sort of understanding of that relationship?
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  So the major commercial spyware developers and companies only ever
• 8:09
  sell their technology to government agencies such as police and law
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  enforcement authorities for, as they say, addressing national security
• 8:18
  threats and terrorism and serious crimes.
• 8:20
  That's the justification, and the licenses are often given solely for those reasons.
• 8:24
  Right.
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  But we've done a lot of research into spyware in recent years and
• 8:29
  as these tools have proliferated, governments have increasingly abused
• 8:33
  them to go after non-legitimate targets such as journalists, activists.
• 8:38
  There's been huge scandals in countries like India, in Hungary,
• 8:43
  in Greece where journalists have been surveilled by governments.
• 8:47
  We know the technology that's used and we know that it's only sold to governments
• 8:50
  so it can't really be non-state actors.
• 8:53
  But this is a, a really growing trend, yeah.
• 8:55
  I wanted to just dwell a moment on what happens when the state kills a
• 9:01
  journalist and because one journalist is killed it sends such a horrific sort
• 9:08
  of message, doesn't it, to anybody who wants to speak out about the state.
• 9:13
  So it's a real tool to kill and to injure journalists to
• 9:18
  silence any kind of opposition.
• 9:21
  Yeah, I think it's the ultimate censorship.
• 9:23
  It's the ultimate silencing but it also sends a message that if you dare
• 9:26
  investigate this topic, this politician, this organized crime group, then you
• 9:31
  can be killed and silenced and-
• 9:33
  or put in jail a long time
• 9:35
  Or put in jail a long time.
• 9:37
  And I think another trend we see which is even exacerbating this
• 9:39
  is the global crisis of impunity for the killing of journalists.
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  Very few cases worldwide end up with those responsible being held accountable
• 9:47
  and even in cases where perhaps the hitmen are identified and prosecuted,
• 9:52
  sometimes even the middlemen or the instigators, but almost never the
• 9:56
  mastermind or the orchestrator.
• 9:59
  It's incredibly rare to, to get the entire group so I think that sends a,
• 10:03
  yeah, a message that people that are commissioning attacks and killings of
• 10:06
  journalists largely are getting away with it and that then creates a, an atmosphere
• 10:11
  in which, it emboldens others to act.
• 10:14
  And there's the quieter forms which are less out of the public eye, which have
• 10:20
  a chilling effect, but they're not so noticeable to the public and maybe that
• 10:25
  brings us to Hungary as a good example of what happened in terms of media capture.
• 10:30
  Or maybe it was in part very obvious and in part behind closed doors.
• 10:35
  I understand from your desk you have great insight into the story of
• 10:39
  media capture under Viktor Orbán.
• 10:41
  Could you speak to that?
• 10:43
  IPI is based in Vienna, so we're a short hop away from Budapest, and
• 10:47
  we have a number of members there in the independent journalist community.
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  So I've probably done more work on Hungary in the last six years than any other
• 10:56
  country in Europe, and for good reason.
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  Because what we saw happen in Hungary in the last 16 years of Orbán rule - Viktor
• 11:02
  Orbán was the far-right prime minister of Hungary leading the Fidesz party, which
• 11:06
  was in power for more than 15 years.
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  During this time basically, the Fidesz party of Orban managed to build and
• 11:14
  then maintain the most sophisticated model of media capture and control ever
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  developed within the European Union, or parts of the democratic world, I think.
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  And that was done by both, on the one hand, creating this huge connected
• 11:29
  propaganda machine, and on the other, targeted attacks and pressure against
• 11:35
  the independent media within the country.
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  So if it had just been for a few years, I think these policies
• 11:40
  would've been bad, but not disastrous.
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  But they had 15 or 16 years to, to tweak it, to calibrate it, and over
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  time this had a really disastrous effect on press freedom in Hungary.
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  And during that time it plummeted in the rankings of global media freedom
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  to among the lowest, not just in the EU, but also anywhere in Europe.
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  So we're putting that in with Azerbaijan and Belarus and other countries.
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  And they really made Hungary the poster child for a model of authoritarian
• 12:11
  governance of how to control the media.
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  I'm particularly interested in how, for our listeners anywhere
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  in the world, how quite a lot of this happened under the radar.
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  I mean, it took a while for the European Union, for example, to raise a red flag,
• 12:28
  let alone the citizens of Hungary to completely understand what was going on.
• 12:32
  Sorry to interrupt you, but as you're telling the story of Hungary, which is
• 12:36
  so important for us all to understand as a model for elsewhere, that could
• 12:40
  happen elsewhere, a playbook if you like.
• 12:42
  Very interested in what citizens need to be alert to, as you tell that story,
• 12:48
  things that may have happened that were under the radar would be really great.
• 12:52
  That's why Hungary, I think, is so interesting an example because
• 12:56
  how do you become the lowest ranked country in Europe, in the
• 13:00
  EU, even though a journalist was never killed, during that time?
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  I think there were… You could count the number of physical attacks on
• 13:07
  journalists on one hand, and yet it was so bad in terms of, the dominant
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  control of a narrative within a country.
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  And like you said, this was done by a really quite intelligent
• 13:19
  playbook, of Fidesz, which included, the four pillars of how we would
• 13:23
  define state-backed media capture.
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  And they're all done through institutional, legal or
• 13:28
  in, regulatory bodies.
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  So existing laws and regulations are used
• 13:33
  Exactly.
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  Not smashing down a door, not closing a newsroom, but a far
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  more nuanced approach, which also had to operate within the
• 13:43
  democratic architecture of the EU.
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  They knew that if they were to take really repressive authoritarian
• 13:49
  steps, the EU would then step in.
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  So it was done over a long period of time, and often through
• 13:55
  proxies rather than the government.
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  So, it started with a number of legal changes, which then created a
• 14:01
  kind of new legislative framework that the government could then
• 14:05
  appoint people to the management board of the public broadcaster.
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  They could fire critical journalists and slowly switch the editorial line
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  there to become pure propaganda.
• 14:15
  Did they give any kind of slogan, any reason as to why they were doing that?
• 14:18
  I mean, yeah, that's why media capture always has national characteristics.
• 14:22
  In Hungary, a lot of it was justified as purging institutions which were
• 14:27
  still dominated by the Communist era, basically, and that these people 'had
• 14:32
  to be removed to allow for a modern and a democratic and independent Hungary'.
• 14:36
  But for the government to be part of the management board.
• 14:40
  I mean, yeah, they acted through proxies- Right … on the board.
• 14:43
  At the beginning, it was, people connected with the party, people
• 14:46
  that they wanted to appoint.
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  By the end, it was former party members.
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  So effectively loyalists, if you like.
• 14:54
  Yes.
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  And the exact same was done at the main regulatory body, the Media
• 14:58
  Council, which was a five-member body.
• 15:01
  And again, by the end, this was, dominated completely by Fidesz appointees.
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  And some of them were even former MPs. And they could-
• 15:09
  Of Fidesz
• 15:10
  … Of Fidesz.
• 15:12
  And they could then take decisions which could remove broadcast
• 15:15
  licenses from independent media under very tenuous reasons.
• 15:20
  They could launch fines against broadcasters, and they could
• 15:23
  allow mergers and acquisitions of pro-government media to more easily
• 15:28
  strengthen their position in the market.
• 15:30
  So public media, regulatory bodies, and then a crucial element
• 15:34
  was the control over the flow of money within the country to media.
• 15:39
  Due to post-independence development in the media market, there was never a hugely
• 15:43
  developed private market in Hungary, which meant that the state advertising
• 15:48
  was always quite a significant boost and financial resource for the media.
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  But under Fidesz and under Orban, this amount of money was massively increased
• 15:57
  to become the biggest in Europe.
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  The agency which funneled that money out, then slowly directed
• 16:04
  it solely to pro-government media.
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  And editors, journalists had an understanding that if you're supportive
• 16:11
  of Fidesz, then you get advertising money, and this was significant money.
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  And independent media would slowly be starved of any funding.
• 16:19
  So it was a kind of carrot and stick approach, by controlling
• 16:22
  the money, basically.
• 16:25
  And the last and most important I would say was the use of government business
• 16:31
  allies operating as proxies who would step into the market, at important
• 16:36
  times, to buy up and then become the new owners of previously independent media.
• 16:42
  And this was also making the most of the exit of the country of a
• 16:46
  number of European investors and media groups, that were facing other
• 16:51
  regulatory or administrative pressure from the government in Hungary, and
• 16:54
  basically decided it's not worth it.
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  This isn't a good return on investment.
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  We're facing too much pressure on our other businesses in the country.
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  We're selling up.
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  We're out.
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  And in then swooped a number of well-funded business allies of the
• 17:08
  government who'd been handed other state contracts to increase their
• 17:12
  coffers, who could then, again, put in their own management, put in their
• 17:17
  own editors, flip the editorial line.
• 17:20
  in some cases, this was done over a number of months, and in other cases,
• 17:23
  in one very prominent case, the new owner came in and then immediately the
• 17:27
  next day closed the entire news outlet.
• 17:30
  So over a number of years, this drastically reduced the number of
• 17:34
  independent media and created a kind of network of propaganda funded
• 17:40
  by taxpayer money, essentially.
• 17:43
  And then a kind of unit was set up in the government that would direct
• 17:48
  political messaging through these media.
• 17:51
  So, all combined, this led to the destruction of media pluralism in
• 17:55
  Hungary, and the creation of a dominant narrative in which anybody who was
• 17:59
  critical or independent was then labeled a traitor, anti-Hungarian,
• 18:04
  someone who's backed by George Soros and other kind of philanthropists,
• 18:07
  and denigrated essentially.
• 18:09
  So it was a very difficult time for media, and they had to basically cling on
• 18:13
  through all of these different pressures, both regulatory, economic, political-
• 18:18
  Bureaucratic
• 18:21
  And bureaucratic, yeah.
• 18:22
  And a lot of this, as you said, happened under the full view of the European
• 18:25
  Union, and it's not like they did nothing, but it took years and years of broad
• 18:30
  daylight capture and control of the media ecosystem, and its distortion into
• 18:34
  a propaganda system, for them to act.
• 18:37
  And organizations like our own, like Reporters Without Borders, in
• 18:41
  collaboration of course with the local Hungarian civil society, were
• 18:45
  essentially screaming for years that, that this is being done.
• 18:49
  And in reality, at the time, I don't think anyone ever thought that this could
• 18:54
  happen within, a democracy within the EU.
• 18:58
  The transformation of this scale into something more akin to Russia, basically.
• 19:03
  And there was never kind of a, a framework or a legal remedy system
• 19:07
  designed in the EU because we never thought it could get this bad.
• 19:10
  So it did take a long time for the EU to come up with solutions.
• 19:15
  There were always legal challenges.
• 19:17
  Hungary could be taken to the European Court of Justice of… But these court
• 19:21
  cases take years and years and years to finalize and can always be appealed.
• 19:25
  So Hungary was a driving factor behind the creation of the European Media
• 19:31
  Freedom Act, which is basically the EU's biggest ever regulation on media.
• 19:36
  It doesn't regulate media themselves, but it regulates the
• 19:39
  ecosystem in which media operate.
• 19:42
  So things like, if we look at the Hungary example, making sure that these flows
• 19:47
  of state advertising to media have to be transparent, based on market criteria,
• 19:52
  not political criteria, to basically make this system less easy to, to game.
• 19:58
  There are new rules around management of public broadcasters,
• 20:02
  to protect their financing, their independence and their governance.
• 20:06
  Again, driven largely from Hungary and other countries.
• 20:10
  There are new rules around media mergers.
• 20:13
  Basically, in Hungary, the government controlled the regulatory bodies.
• 20:17
  When pro-government media wanted to merge together and become even stronger in the
• 20:21
  market, these regulatory bodies would wave it through, on political criteria.
• 20:27
  So now there are new rules.
• 20:28
  The regulators must take into account media independence, effects that a
• 20:32
  merger would have on editorial freedoms, and media pluralism, basically to try
• 20:36
  and stop this kind of thing happening.
• 20:38
  So there are 22 different elements of this Media Freedom Act.
• 20:42
  What do you think of it?
• 20:43
  It came into full force in August of last year.
• 20:48
  It's been quite a patchy implementation.
• 20:50
  States have one year to align their domestic legislation.
• 20:54
  We've seen some countries move ahead very quickly.
• 20:58
  The more democratic countries, like those in Scandinavia and the
• 21:01
  Baltics, are doing quite well.
• 21:03
  Then there's a big group in the middle which are either developing
• 21:06
  legislation, bringing forward draft bills, but are very slow.
• 21:11
  And then there are others for a long time, like Hungary, who completely rejected it,
• 21:16
  called it a diktat from Brussels, which was trying to break apart the government
• 21:21
  and increase EU ownership over media.
• 21:25
  Since the change in government in Hungary, that narrative has completely changed.
• 21:29
  And now for the first time, [in Hungary] we have a government which
• 21:32
  communicated that it intends to defend free and independent journalism.
• 21:36
  And just last week, the first post-election media bill was passed, which
• 21:42
  would overhaul the Orban era system, in legislation for the public broadcaster
• 21:49
  and the media regulator, and try to massively increase their independence and
• 21:54
  their normal functioning, essentially.
• 21:56
  So these rules, now in effect in Hungary, are basically aligned
• 22:01
  with this new Media Freedom Act.
• 22:03
  But this was only one element, and I think the new Tisza government in Hungary has
• 22:06
  said that it will return in the autumn with a new, more comprehensive bill.
• 22:12
  But basically that this was the first step that needed to be done.
• 22:16
  So we're watching very closely for that.
• 22:18
  We're in touch with Hungarian civil society, media experts, and academics
• 22:23
  who are watching very closely and supporting the government in the
• 22:27
  development of this legislation.
• 22:28
  But to sum it up, Hungary experienced the most severe decline ever seen,
• 22:34
  since the creation of the European Union, in press freedom, during the
• 22:38
  last 17 years, and we have a historic opportunity now to build back, to increase
• 22:43
  safeguards, and to create a essentially normal and healthy media ecosystem.
• 22:48
  But it's extremely hard to do, because 17 years of decline cannot
• 22:54
  be remedied within one year, and media reform is a very complex thing.
• 22:58
  It involves changing the financing system, the institutions, the legislation.
• 23:04
  And of course, even though the government has changed, the previous media owners are
• 23:09
  still in charge of a lot of this media.
• 23:12
  Their propaganda funding has been cut off and there's now a kind of reorganization
• 23:16
  where a number of these media previously supported by the government, purely
• 23:20
  essentially to produce propaganda, have since collapsed or are selling up, or
• 23:25
  the owners are retreating, saying, "We don't want anything more to do with this."
• 23:29
  So there will be this kind of huge period of reorganization, and there will still
• 23:33
  be Fidesz and Orban-supporting media, in fact- there should be for a pluralistic
• 23:39
  media system, but they won't be completely funded by public money anymore.
• 23:45
  So it should return to a more, a normal system.
• 23:47
  Do you think this Media Freedom Act is a piece of model legislation for
• 23:51
  the world in terms of media freedom?
• 23:54
  I think there's no other regional governance institutional body globally
• 23:58
  that has such a kind of progressive set of rules around protecting and
• 24:04
  safeguarding media independence.
• 24:06
  It took us a lot of time and a lot of work to get this passed.
• 24:09
  So IPI was part of the process?
• 24:12
  We were part of the process.
• 24:13
  We were meeting with the Commission and the Parliament here in Brussels, putting
• 24:17
  forward position papers, trying to kind of shape and take the example of Hungary to
• 24:21
  say, "This is why we really need this, not just for Hungary, but to make sure another
• 24:26
  country can never use the same loopholes in an economic or a regulatory system,
• 24:31
  to make sure we will never have an Orban 2.0" and that's our key argument now.
• 24:37
  We have Andrej Babiš, who's the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic,
• 24:40
  who's actively trying to undermine the independence of the public
• 24:44
  broadcaster in the Czech Republic.
• 24:46
  In Slovakia, you have Prime Minister Fico of the ruling SMER party, who's
• 24:49
  incredibly hostile to independent journalism and is using the same
• 24:54
  tactics to try and increase government control over media regulatory bodies.
• 24:58
  So it's not just Orban is gone, everything is okay, but we need to see this new
• 25:03
  Media Freedom Act used as a tool properly, backed by legal sanctions if it's not
• 25:09
  implemented by member states, to make sure that Hungary never happens again.
• 25:13
  Thank you for going through that.
• 25:15
  I just wanted to understand, if it's possible, what citizens can do,
• 25:20
  worried about the media where they are, worried about the takeover
• 25:25
  of independent media they once supported, no longer independent,
• 25:30
  or they've gone out of business.
• 25:31
  They don't feel like they can trust sources online, and just any advice
• 25:36
  you can share from your position at the IPI for people listening.
• 25:40
  Sure.
• 25:40
  Yeah.
• 25:40
  I mean, I think every citizen, every news reader has the same challenges right now.
• 25:45
  You, myself, and everyone who wants to access news, which is that, as you said
• 25:49
  again in your introduction- We're faced with this incredibly diverse and confusing
• 25:56
  media landscape which is on print, on TV, on radio, digital, social media.
• 26:01
  It's everywhere, and it's very hard to understand where to get
• 26:04
  your news, who to trust these days, more difficult than ever.
• 26:08
  And if you add AI onto that, it's another factor.
• 26:12
  So I sometimes feel as if it's almost unfair to ask citizens to navigate this
• 26:17
  kind of crazy, boisterous media landscape when everybody's vying for your attention.
• 26:22
  So one of the things we're pushing for, as part of a model for supporting
• 26:27
  independent journalism, is media literacy, to teach people, even as
• 26:31
  young as children in schools and universities, how to access and how
• 26:36
  to differentiate quality, fact-based journalism, from social media content
• 26:42
  and disinformation and propaganda online.
• 26:44
  There are tools you can use to, to identify trusted media outlets, those who
• 26:49
  are verified as conducting public service.
• 26:53
  I would say try and fact-check as much as you can information you're
• 26:56
  reading, definitely information that's coming from social media.
• 27:00
  Don't just read one media outlet.
• 27:02
  Try and get a pluralism of ideas and perspectives.
• 27:06
  if you're using AI, use an LLM - a large language model - that properly
• 27:12
  cites its sources, and maybe, it's a difficult one, but if you want to support
• 27:17
  independent journalism, pay for your news.
• 27:20
  It's a hard one to say, but we've got so used to not paying for news, and it's
• 27:25
  getting increasingly difficult to create a business model that supports independent
• 27:30
  journalism, and subscribers and dedicated readers are a crucial part of that.
• 27:35
  The last thing would be support civil society, support NGOs which are
• 27:39
  trying to defend free press, global media freedom organizations as well.
• 27:43
  And if you're living in a country where the free press is under
• 27:46
  pressure, where newsrooms are facing closure or attacks from government,
• 27:52
  join protests, join campaigns.
• 27:54
  It was really important to see in Hungary where thousands of people
• 27:58
  were out on the streets protesting when, this case I mentioned where the
• 28:02
  owner stepped in and then immediately closed the news outlet the next day.
• 28:06
  There were huge mass protests about this.
• 28:08
  And the case I mentioned in the Czech Republic around the pressure on the
• 28:11
  public broadcaster, just a couple of weeks ago there were huge demonstrations in
• 28:15
  Prague outside demanding the protection of the public broadcaster, which the
• 28:20
  citizens see as very trustworthy.
• 28:22
  So it can have an effect, not just in Europe, but globally I think, and it's a
• 28:27
  crucial part of supporting a free press.
• 28:30
  So really looking to see online what group in your community or society supports
• 28:36
  an independent media and is going to be connected to threats to it, so that you're
• 28:40
  at least on their mailing list, you know when they're having a meeting, a protest.
• 28:45
  You're able to stay alert and informed about what's happening
• 28:48
  to the media in your country.
• 28:50
  Because sometimes these protests happen and you see them on the news
• 28:53
  and you think, "Oh, I would have liked to have been part of that, but
• 28:57
  I'm not on the right social media platform," or, I haven't given enough
• 29:02
  forethought to be in the loop to be able to be aware of what's happening.
• 29:06
  And I think awareness is a really important part of this
• 29:10
  I fully agree.
• 29:11
  I was amazed by what happened, as so many were, in Hungary, with the vote.
• 29:17
  How did the independent journalists in Hungary manage to somehow be heard?
• 29:22
  Or how was it that the public were, in that giant wall of pro-Orban media,
• 29:28
  how were they able to get to the point where they decided, "No, I'm going to
• 29:32
  go and make a point of voting him out"?
• 29:34
  Yes, breaking through this propaganda system created by Orban was always the
• 29:40
  big challenge for independent media, and the smaller investigative media.
• 29:46
  But I think they are a global example of resilient independent
• 29:51
  journalism, where they just kept doing their job, they kept investigating
• 29:56
  companies, politicians, government.
• 29:59
  They kept exposing wrongdoing.
• 30:01
  And after a while they… The corruption became so overwhelming
• 30:06
  and so visible to society.
• 30:08
  You would never read about it in the government newspaper on a
• 30:11
  newsstand or in… You would never see it on the public broadcaster.
• 30:14
  But when these media started and kept relentlessly investigating and
• 30:19
  publishing about it, I would say even in new forms as well, in documentaries,
• 30:24
  videos, and it really broke through into society and tapped into a nerve
• 30:29
  of frustration and discontent that had been there for a long time.
• 30:34
  Then this snowballed into something, bigger.
• 30:38
  So I think in this election, journalism and its ability to expose wrongdoing
• 30:43
  and corruption played a huge, huge role.
• 30:46
  And again, that's a really positive example of why a free press is
• 30:50
  crucial for identifying wrongdoing, addressing corruption, and ultimately
• 30:55
  protecting a democratic system.
• 30:57
  They managed to cut through, and they must've been under so much pressure,
• 31:00
  and so much financial pressure.
• 31:02
  So in similar circumstances, you can identify who are these people and how can
• 31:07
  we support them as a community because they're not getting any more funding,
• 31:11
  and yet, you know, day in, day out.
• 31:13
  And they've managing to work out ways to get around the system.
• 31:16
  You said creating videos, documentaries and managing to cut through.
• 31:21
  There's a lot of lessons in there for others.
• 31:25
  Jamie, anything else you wanted to say before we end our chat today?
• 31:29
  I'm really hoping that Hungary can continue to be this kind of positive
• 31:32
  example after so many years of being the poster child of everything negative.
• 31:37
  In terms of democracy, hopefully it can be something we look to
• 31:41
  and something that can inspire.
• 31:43
  On that note, we will end there.
• 31:44
  Thank you so much for being with us today.
• 31:46
  Appreciate it.
• 31:47
  Thanks so much.
• 31:48
  it was great to be here.
• 31:49
  Bye for now.
• 31:56
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• 32:00
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• 32:05
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