Total Centralisation and the Illiberal Takeover

The patterns of media capture in Visegrad

30 November 2018

Edit Zgut-Przybylska

Visegrad Insight Fellow

In illiberal regimes, it is not necessary to imprison dissident journalists massively á la the Turkish method; due to the shrinking market opportunities, it is sufficient to capture enough of the media landscape.

This phenomenon is increasingly common in the Visegrad countries leading to the deteriorating media freedom indicators, where another 2/3 majority of Viktor Orbán resulted in an unprecedented centralisation in Hungary.

A policy of subterfuge

No investigation is going to be launched against the reporter working for US-owned TVN who was about to be questioned by the Polish Homeland Security Office for propagating Fascist materials. The incident in question involved the journalist Piotr Wacowski who infiltrated a neo-Nazi group last year and filmed the group celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday in a Polish forest.

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Edit Zgut-Przybylska

Visegrad Insight Fellow

Dr. Edit Zgut-Przybylska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology (IFIS) in the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) and a visiting fellow at CEU Democracy Institute. Her research interest covers informality and populism in the context of democratic backsliding and the constraining role of the European Union. She is also a visiting lecturer at the Foreign Service Institute of the US State Department. Synthetic versions of her work are available on POLITICO EUROPE, Foreign Policy and Visegrad Insight. Edit held a re:constitution fellowship 2022/2023, a Rethink.CEE fellowship at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a Visegrad Insight Fellowship. She previously worked at Political Capital Research Institute and prior to that, she was a journalist at various media outlets in Hungary.

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