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The new 170-page law attempts to regulate all television and radio stations, newspapers and Internet sites. It even applies to any blogs and foreign media available in Hungary.
At the center of the control mechanisms is a new government agency staffed exclusively with Fidesz members. It has the power to impose fines of up to €750,000 ($983,000) for articles with objectionable content - and has the sole authority to decide what is deemed objectionable. All staff-members of public media organizations will be placed under government supervision.
Last week Hungarian TV announced that despite foreign criticism “we are not even considering” changing the media law. According to Reuters ”That comment is not surprising. It was Orbán who said ‘Hungary shouldn't have to adapt to the European Union, the EU should adapt to Hungary,‘ during his first term as prime minister 11 years ago, when Hungary was still seeking EU membership.”
Government officials did not react to a request for comment. But Laszlo L. Simon, a member of Orbán’s FIDESZ party and the head of parliament's Cultural and Media Committee told the state news agency MTI Wednesday that the foreign criticism was a “’European circus’ directed by the continent's Socialist parties”.
The most visible sign of the new Hungary is the in 28-by-20-Inch-plaque that is now mandatory in all government buildings (including schools, ministries and military barracks). “A new social contract” has sprung into being “as a consequence of the successful revolution in the voting booths. […] Hungarians have voted for a new system, a system of national unity.” The government, the plaque continues, will complete this unity “resolutely and without compromise”.
The new censorship sent it’s first warning letter to the antiracist Radio Tilos.

Tilos is a non-profit community radio station in Budapest, regularly organizing various party events around town. The theme of Tilos Slam 2010 was “DiscrimiNATIONS”, with which Tilos proudly joined the anti-racist action week on the International Day for the Elimination ofRacial Discrimination on March 21, 2010.
The Department for contents of National Media and Info communications Authority has warned Tilos because it broadcast music of the rapper Ice-T on September 2 at 17.53. This constitutes a “probable criminal act, which justifies prosecution by the administrative”. The music aired by Tilos Radio was considered to be able to influence the physical, moral and spiritual development of young people under 16 years and as such it should be classified as Category III music to be broadcast only between 21 and 5 am.
The censors stress the fact that Time Warner has not published one of Ice-T albums because it considered it sexist. However the office of the former porno editor Szalai forgets to mention that nobody in the USA is questioning the right of the rapper to air his music any time of the day. Even if true, only 1.1 percent of Hungarian youth under 16 have passed a basic level English exam and only 4 percent of the listeners of Tilos Radio are younger than 16. Therefore the chance that the development of Hungarian youth might be disturbed must be considered very slim indeed.
Nevertheless the Hungarian censors are scandalized by the rappers remark “Catch you in the streets and your ass will get tossed”.
Go to any Hungarian school and listen to the talk of youngsters under 16 years and one will doubtlessly hear worse.
Probably no other language contains so many expletives as Hungarian.
Arthur Waley wrote: “What is hard today is to censor one’s own thoughts, - To sit by and see the blind man on the sightless horse, riding into the bottomless abyss.” (Censorship)
It’s really charming how a small antiracist Hungarian Radio Station irritated Hungarian censorship by broadcasting a song of an American rapper. Yet the rampant and obvious anti-Semitism found in Fidesz publications does not worry the Department for contents of National Media and Info communications Authority.
Karl Pfeifer is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist