LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Both Prime Minister Viktor Orban here in Hungary and President Trump spend a lot of time trashing the press for being fake, biased, left-wing. And when Orban returned to power 15 years ago, he and his party, Fidesz, decided to do something about what they perceived as media imbalance. Boris Kalnoky is a Fidesz supporter and the head of the School of Media at the state-funded Mathias Corvinus Collegium - or MCC.
BORIS KALNOKY: What Fidesz concluded is that they will never stand a chance of being on a stable footing politically if they don't get the even playing field in the media, and so there was a conscient decision to try and change it.
FADEL: Kalnoky asserts that Orban was simply trying to level the playing field, calling on private businessmen to establish outlets with Christian democratic viewpoints.
KALNOKY: So the aim was never to completely dominate the media market. The aim was to produce maybe a 50/50 balance.
FADEL: Journalists and organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists dispute that. They point to a new law working its way through parliament that they say would wipe out the remaining independent press in Hungary, like Atlatszo.
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FADEL: It's the only watchdog investigative outlet in Hungary. Journalists report on corruption, bogus contracts, the use of state funds. After their weekly editorial meeting, Editor-in-chief Tamas Bodoky leads us into his office. He points to a map by his desk where he says his team tracked a yacht Orban and his inner circle use.
TAMAS BODOKY: They were using it totally secretly. So we had the foreign minister pictured on the yacht while he was posting on Facebook pictures from his office in suit working. So it was a big scandal.
FADEL: Like most independent nonprofits in Hungary, Atlatszo gets international grants and support - it's half the budget. Now, Bodoky worries this kind of investigative journalism may soon go dark.
BODOKY: The so-called Sovereignty Protection Office will blacklist organizations and ban them from accepting any kind of foreign funding.
FADEL: Hungarians were expecting something big was coming when Prime Minister Viktor Orban called for a spring clean in a fiery speech back in March.
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FADEL: He vowed to go after what he called a shadow army of political opponents, journalists, activists and judges working for foreign powers. And many say he's now making good on that promise through this transparency law that the government says is meant to protect Hungary's sovereignty from foreign influence. But the definition of what that threat is is vague. There's mention of unity, the family, biological gender, the Christian culture. It also says it will specifically target activities capable of influencing public opinion. The consequences would be the blacklisting, but also raids, costly fines of up to 25 times the international funding received and possible dissolution of the organization itself.
So what are you going to do?
BODOKY: We have some reserves built up in the last 15 years. So we still have some runway, and we will try to get this law canceled or we will try to go to court.
FADEL: Kalnoky, the head of the School of Media at MCC, says if these places can't survive without international support, maybe they shouldn't.
KALNOKY: My definition of independent media is financial independence. If you need money from sources other than your consumers, then you're not independent. If you take funding from NGOs, foreign governments, embassies, Google, taxpayer money, the EU, then I would argue you are not independent. You're financially dependent on money that does not come from you being able to sell your product.
FADEL: Orban's supporters see this as him protecting Hungary from nefarious actors beyond its border, but his detractors say he's copying Russia. There, President Vladimir Putin used a foreign agent law to demonize and force civil society into submission. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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