Press freedom is generally respected in the United Kingdom, but CPJ was alarmed by a legal case in which Interbrew, a Belgium-based brewing group, and the British Financial Services Authority (FSA), a banking and investment watchdog agency, demanded that several U.K. media outlets turn over documents that had been leaked to them. The case threatened…
The exhilarating prospect of broad press freedoms that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago has faded dramatically in much of the post-communist world. A considerable decline in press freedom conditions in Russia during the last year, along with the stranglehold authoritarian leaders have imposed on media in Central Asia, the Caucasus,…
Even as Hungary moved closer to joining the European Union, Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his right-wing Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Party (Fidesz-MPP) continued to bully Hungary’s public service broadcasters and retaliate against unfavorable coverage in the independent media.
POLITICAL REFORMS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH, along with the advent of democratic governments in Croatia and Serbia, brightened the security prospects for journalists in Central Europe and the Balkans. In contrast, Russian’s new government imposed press restrictions, and authoritarian regimes entrenched themselves in other countries of the former Soviet Union, particularly in Central Asia, further threatening…
A BATTLE BETWEEN THE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT and left-leaning opposition over control of the boards that regulate state-owned radio and television dominated Hungarian press freedom debate in 2000. After the four-year terms of the National Radio and Television Board (ORTT) and three other broadcast boards expired in February, opposition parties failed to exercise their legal right…
Hungary joined NATO in April and remained a front runner for European Union membership. However, these diplomatic victories could not mask the government’s growing contempt for the press and especially for journalists investigating stories that might embarrass the ruling Fidesz Party. In 1999, Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the Fidesz Party sought more control over…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ ) is greatly alarmed by a December 27 grenade attack near the offices of the independent weekly Elet es Irodalom in Budapest. The newspaper’s editors suspect the attack came in reprisal for its recent court victory in a libel suit that Your Excellency and Fidesz, the main governing party, filed against it in October.