Washington Post not unbiased either -- Hungary media law

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Baronius,

Rotku has it just right about tyranny of the majority.

Question: So if a 2/3rd majority in parliament wanted the minority dead because they suck, that's ok, after all enforcing the will of the majority is a basic concept of democracy?

Answer: Of course it is not ok. That is so because Hungary is not just a democracy, it has a constitution that guarantees individual that are inalienable, too. Orbán is just the prime minister under this constitution - he has not by public mandate, 2/3 of the vote after all, become tyrannus for time of Hungary. Unless the Hungarian constitution has been significantly altered from the template it was modelled after it is precisely not about 'winner takes all'.

That's why the party manifesto thing puts me off: His party is just the strongest party in the parliament - but Orbán has decreed that his party's manifesto is to be shown in public places* **? Just as if the party was the state?

Article three of the German constitution, which represents the very basic constitutional principle "ius respicit aequitatem" that has also been also adopted by Hungary, prohibits unequal treatment without cause. In the US it is located in the 14th amendment.

So what about the minority parties? Their programs get to be shown also? No i.e. they are treated unequally. That means that Orbán's party is elevated prominently over the others by that measure. Is there a cause that justifies that elevated treatment?

You tell me (to wit: That Orbán's party is iyo more awesome than the others and got 2/3 of the seats in parliament are not a rationally compelling reasons). Unless you can come up with something convincing that I haven't thought of the measure is probably unconstitutional because it is arbitrary

Spoiler

* In the US that would be as if Bush (Obama) had mandated that the Republican (Democratic) Party program be shown prominently in all federal buildings. I presume that would cause some sort of a stir. I can just see Olbermann (O'Reilly/Hannity/Beck/Limbaugh) frothing at the mouth.

** Oh yes, I haven't read that decree either.

 

For those (undoubtedly quick-) readers who might have been confused by Ragusa's latest post:

This is riding on definitions, and twisting my post. I mentioned that the will of the majority is a BASIS of democracy, not that it IS THE democracy. A house or other building has a "basis" so it doesn't collapse or sink into the ground/soil, but it's not everything it needs, right? It has walls, windows, roof etc., too, right?
I repeatedly emphasized that the will of the majority is enforced while ensuring the SAME rights to everyone, not just the members of majority. This includes everything, practically.

This is a lie, as it was in the first post too. It is not the party's "manifesto", it doesn't have any formal or informal element that would make it the personal/own manifesto of Fidesz. It was accepted in the Parliament of Hungary.

Ragusa has hidden this in the spoiler tag at the end of his post.

It reflects great lawyer qualities that he repeatedly forms an opinion about things which CONTENT he does not even know

All in all, two points:
(1) Ragusa, as a lawyer, even doesn't know the EXACT TEXT of the new Hungarian media law, but he has a firm criticism and opinion about it
(2) Ragusa, as a lawyer, criticizes the handling of a political declaration of Hungary, even without knowing its CONTENT, its text

Wow!

 

Tell me, what difference would it make to an assessment of the decree to publish the Party Manifesto on all public buildings if I quoted or had read the decree? The existence of the decree and its content (publish the party manifesto on all public places) of the decree is established fact.

You can entertain yourself by writing that I haven't read it until your finger are sore with blisters It would make no difference whatsoever for our discussion if I had read or quoted the decree. Since we are talking about already established facts, it just doesn't matter any more. That's why those ** were in the spoiler - because whether I read it is immaterial to the question at hand, something you just don't get.

 

Ragusa is a liar, because the "manifesto", as I've written, is not a "Party's" manifesto.

 

Oh Baronius, I sincerely apologise for getting that wrong. It isn't 'The Party Manifesto'. I concede defeat

The writ (which I have read (here btw), unlike the writ that made its presentation mandatory) is undersigned by the 'Chairman of the National Assembly' and two 'Clerk of the Parliament' i.e. it is a parliamentary resolution - undoubtedly enacted with a procedurally extra proper 2/3 majority, and by the ruling party.

I really should have known it was 'A Manifesto Of The Party' instead. I apologise for my crass mis-characterisation.

Has anybody ever bothered to tell you about distinctions without differences?

PS: Liar? Tsk, tsk.

 

hey you wanna have a beer ? we could talk

 

I don't think so.

PS: I went the extra length and translated the Hungarian text of the law that is available on the site of the Hungarian parliament with the help of Hungarian friend. I don't come to a different conclusion. That is an hour of my life that I never will be getting back.

PPS: When I can do that, the people criticising it at the EU, major newspapers and the OSCE can do that as well. And they have professional translators. That entire point of yours that "nobody beyond Hungary has read the text and that no one thus can possibly know what the law is about", as moronic it as already is on the face of it, is being made ever more moronic by the fact that the law is online since November 22 of 2010.

 

Congratulations to the talent of Ragusa and his friend that they could translate 170 pages of solid legal text in one hour. That means interpreting 1 page in 21 seconds on average

 

You know, you genius, we read what it regulated and how. Reasonably, we skipped the rest We have shi* to do and lives to live. It's about the (already unreasonable) amount of work I am willing to put into arguing with you.

And never mind how fast or thorough we read, the underling point - as expressed explicitly in PPS - was that your claim that we, like anyone else who is critical, don't know what we are talking about 'because the text of the law is unavailable in English', is utter and complete nonsense. Everybody who has web access, and that includes the critics of the law, can read it, and when they either speak Hungarian themselves or can hire a competent translator, they can find out what it says.

That was what my little translation exercise was about.

 

No matter how hopelessly he tries to improve the situation now, Ragusa won't be able to clean the shame on his reputation: everyone knows he criticized a law here without even knowing its text, and only MUCH LATER he quick-checked the text at all (it would be funny if criminals were permanently sentenced to prison based on suspicions first, and then later their crimes would be investigated). One could ask him: where is professionalism, Ragusa?

But the situation is actually even worse:

Isn't this a bit strange from the mouth of a lawyer? "what the law IS ABOUT" ?! In the world of law, where every grammar detail can mean a lot of difference, where every word may be criticial in the wording of a law... This is like saying: death penalty exists in Iran, China and USA (and in other countries); the related laws in Iran, China and USA are all ABOUT death penalty, so what is the difference? Is there any difference in the laws of China, Iran and USA related to death penalty? Is there a difference between the case of USA and Iran, for example? Both are ABOUT death penalty...

Is that a lawyer who seems to critizice a law self-confidently purely based on what "the law is about"? In the world of law where every little detail of the wording can matter, especially when the lawyer in question is not even the expert in the law of the country he decided to criticize.

Ragusa admittedly has great friends, however. Contacting a Hungarian friend who is not sleeping and jumps immediately at 2 AM to examine a law is nice performance... unless, of course, this exists and happened only in the imagination of Ragusa...

P.S.: The general question arises as well: you became a bit too obsessed with Hungary and its law, didn't you, Ragusa? Ragusa became so obsessed, that -- as we've seen -- he even disregards the fundamental principles of research and professional (lawyer) approach.

 

I do not think your tactic has the desired effect Baronius.

As for the topic, try to step away from it and look at it objectively. Remove the nationalistic lenses, the frustration at the former leadership and your personal liking for PM Orban and his party. Also consider this as it has puzzled me, what has stopping showing "filth" to minors to do with forcing rebuttals and making everyone give everyone equal time?

 

There is no tactic. I believe a lawyer (as well as known organizations) should form an opinion based on exact knowledge of a law, instead of making general, non-concrete accusations such as "it's too broad" or "gives all power to the governing party". When you criticize something you don't know well, you call it "objective", I call it "stupid".

The best is to agree to disagree. Some of you folks prefer to be clever from a safe and big distance, calling it "objective", while actually you even don't know what you are talking about. Fortunately, it isn't you who makes the decisions for Hungary.

For the time being, I support Orban because he seems to be capable of developing Hungary. At what cost? This is where every country must draw its own line. I hope the conservative (and despite of false accusations and speculations, not dictatoric) approach of Orban will spread to other countries as well (we will see ). Orban already proved a lot in history, this is what e.g. Ragusa and some other noobs (noobs regarding Hungary) do not know. I close my post with the words of Prof. André Reszler (University of Geneva) about Orban:

 

I'm not quite sure what passes for "conservative approach" in Hungary, but the one that we have in the US pretty much sucks; that's just my opinion of things, since you declared your opinion for the rest of us. Nevertheless, I hope it works out better for you than it has for us.

 

Thanks for the good wishes, Chandos.

I think "wild liberalism" took all control in Hungary, and pretty big control in Europe too. Returning to some conservative values is definitely needed. What kind of image, WHAT KIND OF EXAMPLE these TV shows (which were defended from media laws so much by certain people in this thread) show to children? Should "reality shows", sex, drugs, crime be the example for children? Instead of implying that knowledge, playing a musical instrument, reading a book etc. is a much more useful thing to do. I do not say that the state should tell people (or children) WHAT TO DO. That would mean dictature. But the state has a RESPONSIBILITY what example is shown/dictated by the entities that are able to influence big masses and children (press, media, etc.). E.g. the afternoon on the most popular TV channels in Hungary has been filled with stupid "talk shows" (I don't know how to call it in English) where the invited people "discussed" various personal conflicts (e.g. a former couple, then the mom of the girl, etc.), usually ending in fight in the studio (with obscene words + occassionally physical fight). Things that ABSOLUTELY MAKE NO SENSE. And not just one of them: such "shows" have been going whole afternoon. I'll tell below why the allowed content must be regulated to a certain extent and the pure market competition would be insufficient to regulate it.

Assume that competing TV channels (their companies) only put programmes that they expect to be the most popular. Since senseless, aggressive TV shows (and other stupid material) are very popular among the majority of those who watch TV, the channels fill their broadcast time with such programmes. The "democratic" principles are guaranteed: companies broadcast whatever (dirt) they want, and the most watched one wins. And what about the result? The negative example shown to children by the horrible and senseless programmes? Certain people say that then children should stay away from those TV channels/programmes etc. It is not so simple. PRACTICALLY, a popular channel is watched by very many children during the day, and the content in the channel influences them mentally.

The problem can be compared to the case of telecom provider companies, where Significant Market Power companies (SMPs) are instructed by the European Union to meet additional extra requirements. Because they are SIGNIFICANT, they are INFLUENTIAL (this is a simplified explanation, but that's the point).

If TV channels were allowed to broadcast whatever (non-prohibited but LOW QUALITY) they want, then the pure market competition would only take ECONOMIC objectives into account, possibly disregarding other aspects (such as children).

To sum up, here is a bit simplified informal statement:
It is my right that when my child watches the most popular TV channels, he/she will not always watch junk.*

This is a "right" that may be in conflict with the freedom of channels to broadcast whatever legal they want.

*This is especially true to cases where the parents cannot or do not guide the child at all ("you already watched that programme for 2 hours, now we go outside to sport/walk/talk").

------------

The goal is to find a good balance between regulation and market competition (with as little regulation as possible, and as much free competition as possible). This is what currently the EU follows regarding Telecommunication.

In the light of the above, it is really ridiculous when certain users (e.g. in this thread) get a "dictature!" hysteria when there is talk about "state control" over anything. State control should be minimized, but to a well-defined extent, it is needed. Even over the content that is available on the media, yes.

 

Regulating the media outlets in the US is considered "liberal" while allowing markets to pretty much do as they want is considered conservative. The press was always independent from "entertainment" and was not supposed to be for profit, and it was regulated only in that it had to be "fair" to all parties, (provide equal time and access) at least to the major ones. In the 1980s government regulation ended and now it is allowed to do pretty much what it wants. "News" is now for entertainment and profit. That is considered "conservative" in the US. Hence, that is exactly what we have:

So we have pretty much the same problem. As a parent it can be difficult to manage these programs. Democratic principles, liberty, means greater responsibility, not less; it means greater self-control and self-regulation. In the US money and profit rule, so there is little. The problems come from the top down, not the other way around. At least that's how I see it.

 

It's slightly off-topic, but your post reminds me to the case of the GSM mobile standard and its great success in Europe (and then in the whole world). One of the (political) reasons of its success was that the GSM standard was unified in Europe, while this wasn't true to the cellphone systems of US (where some newly accepted US law allowed more providers with their own networks -- this led to network-specific, incompatible cellphones etc.) This is an example where freedom and totally free competition actually has negative consequences as well. (Of course, this doesn't mean a major minus for them; it just shows that the autoritative, "centralized" politics of Europe that time proved to be much more beneficial in the practice than the more liberal, competition-supporting approach of USA which resulted in incompatible cellphones).

 

Chandos,
I think you are making a mistake when you treat the Hungarian law as something comparable to the US media landscape. Yes, US media are partisan, and cheerfully engage in self-censorship, but that's not something imposed top-down from the government or a majority party. It is the result of an arguably lamentable consensus of the elites. Hungary's media law is about imposed controls - exercise of government power - and exactly not about consensus. In treating the two as comparable you are creating false analogies and come to highly misleading conclusions.

In particular you need to forget about preconceived notions of right and left here - that would be a distraction. This isn't about that. Europe has democratic and authoritarian forces. Belarus post-communist (left-ish) regime is authoritarian, Hungaria's (right wing) Orbán government is borderline authoritarian. It's about what they do, not about how they label themselves. Authoritarians everywhere sound the same, as they praise nation and order, and damn democratic governance as a fraud that needs to be cracked down on, hard. Like through imposition of party control and media 'oversight'.

Hungary's law is the harshest media law in Europe, reflecting current Hungarian political trends, and is as a result being resoundingly criticised by European conservatives and liberals alike, largely be cause structurally it lends itself to political abuse, and because it isn't hard to read in the tea leaves what this law is about. The enforcement body is led by a close and loyal confidant of Orbán, and she has been appointed for nine years. The body itself is thoroughly politicised and appointed by that same parliament that found it appropriate to publish their majority manifesto in all public places. Go figure.

German liberals originally embraced Orbán as a 'new European liberal', but where aghast when they realised that he started to embrace rightist themes and pretty ugly rightist populist politics.

 

You are curtailing freedom of speech because you do not like talk shows and reality TV? You are really upset by this and you really think this is the reason don't you?

Do you know what other countries are doing to give their populace a non-market driven alternative of broadcasting entertainment? They have a public network, funded by fees, tax or at times donations whose entire mission is to be objective, educational and at times hopefully entertaining. We have SVT in Sweden, BBC in the UK, NRK in Norway and even in the strong hold of market liberalism the US they have PBS and C-Span. Most democracies have something like that, one of the signs of a democracies not being very democratic anymore is when the government starts to control the public network directly like Berlusconi with Rai. If you have this, then well maybe it is up to the freaking parents to keep an eye on what is ok for their children to watch? Or? Is it time to go after violent movies next to protect the children? Maybe videogames? Parents can't possible have any responsibility over what their children do god forbid! Legislate!

 

In a first application of the new media law Hungary has just found Ice-T to be too foul to be broadcasted in Hungary. The 1993 Ice-T song "Warning (It's On)" is now officially verboten to be broadcasted before 9pm, because the lyrics "could influence the development of minors in a negative way."

In order to dispel concerns that Hungarian youth couldn't understand the song anyway because of the slang, the NMHH had provided a Hungarian translation, making the text accessible to all.

Nonsense, on two levels. (a) It is a case that underlines the benefits of technical standardisation, nothing else. It certainly has nothing to do with freedom (much less with Hungary's media law), and (b) it also misses on mark on what that standardisation regulates - which is in your example the format, not the content. And even regarding formats, companies were and are totally free to come up with something else. They didn't because the standards made it simply economically stupid to do so for the mass market, which thrives on standardisation.

 

Ragusa - I was not treating the Hungarian law in any manner at all but only acknowledging that many of the same problems exist in the media markets regarding "unsavory" programming. Generally, I'm not in favor of censorship, since it tends to have manifold problems. Just as examples besides just restricting useful information, but it can be a political tool for use against legitimate opposition; also, it tends to have the opposite effect than it is intended to have (it can make the particular piece more popular).

That kind of censorship is nothing new here. Songs have been outright banned for years and altered in rather strange and silly ways:

But that really is what I meant by "from the top down." Sometimes these elites gather their followers, or special instrest groups, in enough force to make restrictions in media and information. I hardly ever worry about the government and censorship, but how just a few large media outlets restrict information and form pulbic opinion, by revealing only certain content, themselves. There was a time that the government worked to prevent that. But not anymore, for whatever the reason(s).