Content and framing in radio news bulletins in urban and rural Hungary

Introduction

Fidesz, a right-wing populist political party transformed the broadcast radio landscape, along with other types of the press, since 2010 when it came to power for the second time. This change is the result of new media law, the introduction of new regulatory practice in licencing and with significant changes in station ownerships (Hargitai et al., 2012; Polyák, 2019; Wilkin et al., 2015) despite formal regulatory independence (Mutu, 2018). This study was motivated by the 2018 general election returns where Fidesz achieved a landslide victory in the entire countryside while the opposition won most Budapest districts (Supplemental Figure 1). We wished to investigate the news available for radio listeners in rural and urban Hungary, through identifying the content and framing of news items that are the building blocks of a reality constructed by the endless series of the news bulletins.

Background

Terestyéni (2007) analysed TV news production during the previous, left-wing government and found that of all politicians appearing on-screen on the public service MTV1, 56% were pro-government and 44% were members of the opposition. Critical news items were 68% government-critical and 46% were opposition-critical, indicating balanced and critical journalism. More recent investigations, however, concluded that watchdog journalism in Hungary has been limited since the change of system (Gerli et al., 2018) and the media provides platforms only for pseudo-investigative journalism (Stetka and Örnebring, 2013).

Since 2010, Fidesz transformed the media landscape and created what critics call an empire of propaganda media (European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECMPF), 2018; Oroszi, 2018). It created a new media law in its first year of governance in 2010, capitalizing its supermajority in the Parliament (Act CLXXXV of 2010 on Media Services and Mass Media; i.e. Mttv.). The next year public service radio, television and the national news agency (MTI) merged into one conglomerate, the Media Services and Support Trust Fund (MTVA) and MTI’s news materials became freely reusable for the media, citing ‘basic right for information’, and criticized by the competition (Index, 2011). Google search requests for Független Hírügynökség, the competing independent news agency drastically fell to almost zero after the decision (Google, 2020). In 2011, MTVA closed all five public service regional radio studios, completing centralization (Hargitai, 2012). In the private stations’ market, the media authority consistently not licenced stations that promoted opposition ideology or those owned by persons close to the opposition, typically citing formal errors in the tenders (Nagy, 2016). The licence of the only national private FM network Class FM was not renewed in 2016 and new national tender was not issued (Máriás et al., 2017) until 2018. The transformation of the radio market was partially driven by free-market logics, where pro-government bidders were able to offer higher broadcasting fees than their counterparts (Mérték, 2012).

The number of low-power small community stations that were first licenced in 2004 under a left-wing government dropped from 61 (2010) to 17 (2019) (DCMMPS, 2019) due to several reasons, including newly introduced rules on minimal air time, programming quotas, the banning of networking and the new requirement of submitting 24/7 programme log to the media authority.

Oroszi (2018) showed that websites, TV and radio channels operate in unison in pushing pro-government messages. Bátorfy (2019) concluded that the purpose of media outlets concentrated into a few media conglomerates is to spread Fidesz’s messages around the country. In contrast, studies by the Hungarian Media Authority (NMHH) consistently show that newscasts in the public service (state-run) media give more airtime to the opposition than to the government. During our study period, according to data published by the Hungarian Media Authority, the government and Fidesz was the subject of 34% of news items while the opposition parties were the subject in 66% in the morning news programme of Kossuth Rádió, the main news and public affairs station of MTVA (NMHH, 2018c). This discrepancy between studies done by the state authority and independent journalists is one of the problems this study addresses.

Radio is ranked third after television and Internet as a source of information on politics and public affairs in 2018 in Hungary. Radio is a regular source of information for 29% of the population, occasionally for another 29% (Mérték, 2018). The most listened to station nationwide during the period of our study was MTVA’s Petőfi Rádió, which reached almost 1.8 million listeners (18% of the population of Hungary) followed by the Rádió 1 network (1.3 million), MTVA’s Kossuth Rádió (1.3 million) and Music FM (1.7 million) (NMHH, 2018c). Local stations reached 1.2 million listeners nationwide (69% reach) with the top 10 local stations each reaching 20,000–60,000 listeners (30–50% reach) (NMHH, 2008a).

The regulatory environment of news broadcasts

According to the Hungarian media law, ‘the public media service provider shall perform the . . . news agency tasks’ (Mttv. 101(1)). While the news agency MTI produces news for MTVA’s radio and TV channels, it also offers a ‘softer-toned’ and low-cost hourly audio newscast for private stations. In addition, the media authority NMHH financially supports daily radio news productions (24 private stations during our study period). News broadcasts of commercial stations are not required by law. However, in the tenders for commercial radio frequencies, about 20% of the total points are given for the committed number and length of news bulletins. Consequently, all commercial stations broadcast news typically in every hour. Community stations as defined in the media law include those where speech or special music genres dominate the schedule. These ‘community’ stations should ‘provide information about social or local community news regularly and perform other news services’ (Mttv. 66(4)a). A few community stations indeed do not broadcast political news.

The media law states that ‘the balanced nature of the information provision shall be ensured either within the given programme or within the series of programmes appearing regularly’ (Mttv. 12. §2). In addition, the ‘Public service codex’ (PSC, 2016) states that news in public service media should be ‘balanced, accurate, thorough, objective, versatile, timely, and responsible’. In 2018 most if not all right-wing media outlets (by number 476) were ‘voluntarily’ united in the Central European Press and Media Foundation (‘KESMA’) (Bátorfy, 2019). When journalists asked István Varga, its president at that time, about the imbalanced press, he responded that Christian and national journalism is a strategic national goal and the Christian, national and conservative ideology is also present in the Fundamental Law (Lampé, 2019).

Sample details

We processed 99 individual online MP3 audio streams (21 in Budapest, 78 elsewhere) that represent 116 state-owned and 144 other radio transmitters, 260 in total. The survey represents 84% of all stations and 90% of all transmitters. For 21 stations we were unable to identify a live audio stream online. Five community stations did not broadcast news at the morning rush hour. We excluded online-only stations and the Ethnic Program of MTVA.

Methods of news analysis

In this study, we analyse radio news from both the producer’s and the listener’s perspective. We identified the following indicators of journalistic quality and ideological balance:

We have monitored and analysed the news output of nearly all broadcast radio stations in Hungary to reveal news editors’ practice in selecting and presenting the news to national, regional and local audiences. We recorded news bulletins simultaneously, on five occasions during the morning drive time, over a period of 12 days, on 15 April 2018 (7:00 a.m.), 17 April (9:00 a.m.), 20 April (9:00 a.m.), 25 April (6:00 a.m.) and 27 April (9:00 a.m.), starting 1 week after the general election of 2018 (8 April), when Fidesz stayed in power and won their third term in a row, 4 years after Hungary’s prime minister first defined Hungary as an illiberal state (Polyák, 2019; Tóth, 2014). We aimed at recording at least 3 full news bulletins from each station to smear the effect of concrete events and recorded 2.7 bulletins per station on average. We recorded and transcribed 1109 news items (without sports, traffic and weather; counting items in identical news bulletins only once) in 278 news bulletins (4.0 items per bulletin); 150 news bulletins were original production, 128 were syndicated and 313 news of the remaining pool of news items were similar (MTVA channels, Oxygen local variants, MTI block variant editions). We excluded repeated news items across the same hour in the aggregate calculations that reflect the journalistic output, but we included all aired items in the geographic statistics (e.g. maps, regional news ecosystems).

The radio landscape

The diversity of radio ecosystems in a given region varied significantly (Figure 1). Budapest had the largest choice (up to 29 stations), followed by the Budapest agglomeration (15–20), large county seats (10–15) and towns (5–10 stations). Only the state channels were available in the eastern, southern and southwestern border regions.

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Figure 1.

The radio landscape diversity in April 2018: the heat map shows the number of stations that can be received at any given location. White areas show regions where only the state-run broadcaster’s channels are accessible over the air.

Independent local news producers increase news diversity and contribute to a healthy and democratic radio ecosystem. Budapest had 14 (+4 state) stations with locally produced news. Cities with a population of 50,000–200,000 had 1–4 stations with local news while most towns (346 towns in Hungary, pop. 1–50,000) had no local radio news production (Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

Radio stations with local newsroom: regions where locally produced news bulletins can be heard on a local transmitter (including network’s central transmitters and excluding any repeaters). On all other locations, news heard on the radio is produced somewhere else. Outlines show stations excluded from the study (due to technical reasons) that may broadcast local news services.

News geography

How are geographic regions represented in radio news at national to local levels?

In all, 82% of the news items were about Hungary (Figure 3). News was dominantly either local (mostly on local station) or national (on national and Budapest stations). Only 2% of news was about non-local Hungarian locations on local stations (Supplemental Figure 3). Hungary is part of the European Union (EU) but only every 10th news item was about European countries. Africa and Australia were represented by 1 news item out of 647. This might be connected to the high value of xenophobia. Xenophobia is stronger in places with fewer foreigners (Eurobarometer, 2018: 11). Similarly, the lack of positive representation of ‘others’ in the news, especially in local stations, together with the anti-migrant rhetoric, may strengthen xenophobia and reinforces geographic identity that is manifested in local and national levels. This selection of news may be both a consequence and a driving factor in maintaining the low level of Budapest-based, regional and European identities of Hungarians (Nárai, 2009).

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Figure 3.

News geography: representation of geographic regions in radio news (n = 647, 0.15% = 1 item).

Local news stories

Which stations broadcast local news stories? While Budapest-based stations generally produce news locally, they do not create local-interest stories. Local news stories were typically told in cities (Supplemental Figure 4). This phenomenon is also seen in the written press and television. The typical publication form of local news in towns, Budapest districts and the agglomeration are free local monthly magazines, usually linked to (but not owned) by the local self-government (MÖSZ, 2012). Budapest events typically are considered of national significance.

What was the content of local news? About 50% of all news items on local stations were local topics (only 5% in Budapest stations) dominated by reports on newly completed local investments (in 63% of stations with any local news) followed by supportive reports on the daily operation of the self-government, local organization or authority (34%); report on a local cultural event (24%) and local tenders and notices (16–16%). We have not found any news items that were critical on local issues; ‘bad’ news was limited to micro emergency (police&fire) (29%), showing an unquestioned loyalty towards the local power.

The highest quality local radio journalism is manifested in prototypically local cultural news stories such as a report about water buffaloes driven out to the reeds from where ‘they returned tired but happy’ (Halas Rádió 04-27, 7:00), a detailed report about a local fishing contest (Halas Rádió 04-25, 6:00) or a report about a local artist (Rádió 7 04-25, 5:30). These are unique in that they are not about media events but report real-life activities of the citizens, building connections between members of a physical community.

Local police&fire (‘micro emergency’) is a theme unique to local news production, and is about ‘minor’ issues that are considered major locally such as a person found unconscious (Rádió 1. Eger 04-27, 7:00), a dog shot (Rádió 1 Heves, 04-17, 9:00) or an elderly person scratched and pushed over (Rádió 1 Salgótarján, 04-20, 9:00). Oxygen produced several local variants of their hourly news bulletin where localization typically involved only micro emergency stories.

Voices and sound bites in news

While newsreaders are storytellers, and the news is epic in genre, sound bites and quotations – the words of characters – put drama into the news storytelling, authenticating what was said and connecting the artificial studio environment with real life.

The presence of sound bites in news typically indicates an original journalistic investigation. It is labour-intensive work and therefore a technical indication of high effort put into creating the news story. In addition, sound bites and word-by-word quotations bring a selection of the ‘real world’ into the news, instead of a journalist’s interpretation. Any such public appearance makes the person more significant in the listeners’ world view.

In total, 20% of news items (n = 796) contained quotations or sound bite materials. Of the potential uses of audio, there was no live reporting on location. Most of the sound bites in local stations were prerecorded on location or phone interviews. Sound bites reused from previous studio interviews dominated in Budapest talk and news stations. Sound bites were most frequently included in MTVA’s Kossuth Rádió (2.6/bulletin – several taken from the state TV’s news programme ‘Hiradó’) and in three talk/news stations in Budapest (Inforádió, Trend, Klubrádió – 2–2.5/bulletin) and 1.15 sound bites per bulletin were included in half of the stations in cities and towns. All syndicated newscast providers, all community stations and 50–60% of local stations had zero sound bites in the sample.

Whose voices are heard in the sound bites? We examined sound bites by the speaker’s profession, political side and sex.

Most speakers were CEOs or politicians (Figure 4). CEOs and experts appeared in Budapest-based stations, government politicians dominated MTVA’s sound bites and local mayors were most often heard in town stations. This shows that Budapest-based stations are more business-oriented the town stations and MTVA, in the smallest and largest scales, give voice to those in power.

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Figure 4.

Sound bites per role per station type.

A total of 77% of the politicians in sound bites were Fidesz members; 23% were opposition and 4% independent (Supplemental Figure 5). National or local opposition members never appeared in local stations; 69% of all government members’ audio appearance was on three MTVA channels. Government members’ voices are pushed on MTVA but are rarely relayed locally. The voices of non-government politicians could be heard on three stations in the sample (out of 99): MTVA’s Kossuth R., Klubrádió; and Rádió 7 (independent mayor). On MTVA, one-third of all politician sound bites were from opposition members. However, their acoustic presence does not indicate whether their voices support government-critical or pro-opposition discourses (see later). In many rural regions, opposition politicians’ voices could only be heard framed by MTVA channels’ narratives. The female population was represented by only 24% of all sound bites, typically school heads, artists and event organizers. About 10% of CEOs and experts and 17% of all politicians were female, reinforcing the perceived gender inequalities (Supplemental Figure 6).

News sources

We catalogued news sources that were credited in the news copy and use it as an indicator of political balance (Supplemental Figure 7). We assumed that balanced stations reused news items from both pro-government and opposition press. However, while any citation provides visibility to the quoted title, it is not a direct indication of political content. MTI referred to a Népszava article about new prizes in state lottery (04-17, 9:00), only statistically fulfilling public service requirements.

News items credited 88 pro-government and 16 opposition sources, the latter were collected in 7 stations, all Budapest-based (3 private, 2 community and 2 MTVA channels). Most opposition-sourced news was aired on Music FM, a hit music station (!) that was owned by an opposition leader Lajos Simicska (the station was closed since the study was made).

National news items in which the source was named were mostly taken from MTI (38 citations), m1 (state-run TV) (10) and Magyar Idők (pro-government daily) (10) while local news was often read with little modification from county dailies (9). One county typically has one daily newspaper that is now fully controlled by the government and its domestic and foreign news pages are edited centrally, not in the county newsroom (Czinkóczi, 2018). The most often cited opposition source is Népszava (social democrat daily newspaper) (7 citations).

Named news sources and sound bites can be used to construct an objective, but technical political map of radio news (Supplemental Figure 8). It shows that most of the country’s stations give visibility to pro-government sources while opposition is mostly visible in the Budapest agglomeration and some cities. Technically balanced news output was identified on two Budapest stations: Civil R. (that lost its frequency since this study was made), Klubrádió (that also lost its frequency since the study was made); and on MTVA.

News themes

What is the distribution of content types within the news bulletins? We compared news sections (broad topics) (Supporting Table 1) in each news producer type (Supplemental Figure 9). News about government politics occupied 20% of MTVA news, while it was only 4% on MTI Audio, a similar ratio to most local stations. This difference shows that MTI Audio targets local stations with different needs than the listeners of the national channels. No free/alternative stations reported on government politics. More news items dealt with state institutions, especially NAV (National Tax and Customs Administration) than with government politics (except on MTVA). Along with various tender calls, news about the opening hours of the tax offices can serve the purpose of making the presence of state visible to all citizens.

Analysis of framing and discourses

News both represents and constructs the world (e.g. Gerbner, 1998). Radio news tells microstories that are parts of longer stories featuring the same actors, which are parts of bigger stories and so on. Frames evaluate a story and promote a particular interpretation (Entman, 1993). Frames put the news event into context and explain (or suggest) the values and motivations of the characters in (or beyond) the news story. These discourses guide our world view, create the meaning of the news and, ultimately, contribute to the social construction of reality (Berger and Luckmann, 1966).

We represent frames in this study as simple statements similar to how Egri (1972) describes ‘premises’ in movies (Egri, 1972). Premises are story seeds that can be told in many ways and developed into different plots. In our case, these statements are utilized as the verbal expressions, or titles, of preconceived framing discourses. News copies contain the actual plots that carry the framing message.

We assigned a framing statement to each news item as we progressed through the news transcripts. We grouped these statements into classical news themes (domestic politics, economics, etc.) and finally grouped these into large umbrella themes based on political motivation: whether the framing supported government politics or not; or was neutral (Supporting Table 2 and figure there).

A key element in the political agenda is to keep these framing messages alive, by repeating the same story, using the news of the day. The same framing message can be assigned to any news item by choosing the right context and wording (Kempeler, 1947[2013]). For example, a typical wording of a news story with a pro-government framing statement (‘economy is OK’) is ‘salaries increase beyond expectations’ (MTI Audio 04-20, 9:00).

There are several methods and indicators that help identify the framing message, for example, discourse analysis that observes the words used (e.g. ‘migrant’, or adjectives), the use of terms with symbolic meanings (e.g. ‘Brussels’), repetitions (typically in quotations and themes); the protagonist or antagonist roles (and their supporters or friends and opponents or enemies) assigned to the characters or institutions in the story; the focus or omission of particular details or connections to other news stories with established meanings. When we assigned framing statements to news items, we took the main discourses in government and opposition press into consideration as of April 2018. References, terms and themes may change their meaning rapidly with changing political context and therefore objective control is difficult and should be based on contemporary public debates. Narrative structural elements were not analysed.

The process of assigning a framing statement is subjective. Pro- and anti-government listeners may read the same story differently, both trying to confirm their world view with the same news story. However, the inclusion or exclusion of the story is already a statement. The complex underlying meanings of words or roles of characters may not be readily decodable for every listener; and some listeners (or analysts) may over-decode a news copy and assign a message where there is none – intended. This makes framing analysis somewhat subjective if it is made by a single researcher. It is a potential future direction to compare how different persons assign different messages to the same news copy.

However, from a news producer’s point of view, the discoursive interpretation of a news copy is clear. When we assign a framing statement to each news copy, we attempt to reverse engineer the editorial intentions. The political-ideological environments of newsrooms range from pro-government or pro-opposition to politically balanced; neutral (no politics) and to all-critical (watchdog) approaches or their combinations. Beyond contextual, structural and linguistic tools, framing messages can be supported by the selection or exclusion of news items and auditive tools such as using sound bites. Any news can be recontextualized or miscontextualized by the appropriate journalistic tools. Another factor is the availability and (easy) access to news stories or the resources to obtain original news stories.

Results

Government critique and support

Our quantitative analysis shows that the news was dominated nationally by positive stories (Figure 5). MTVA produced highly politized news bulletins, dominated by pro-government messages (almost 50%), with minimal critical (2%) and neutral (6%) materials while Budapest talk stations offered the most government-critical or neutral news (both almost 20%). Budapest-based and community stations, however, are extremely diverse (Figure 6).

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Figure 5.

News themes grouped by news producer type.

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Figure 6.

News themes in Budapest-based and community stations, by station.

European Union related news

MTVA and MTI audio both lacked any pro-EU news and MTVA has about five times as much anti-EU news than the other stations, that latter have roughly similar or somewhat less pro-EU news (Figure 7). This suggests that the government pushes anti-EU sentiments aggressively over its channels, compliant to government agenda, but the other stations don’t follow it.

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Figure 7.

European Union in the news.

The civil sector

The civil sector is another target for the government (Mikecz and Szabó, 2015; Wilkin et al., 2015) (Figure 8). Positive news about the civil sector was only found in community stations, where criticism was also present. The civil sector remained invisible in MTVA/MTI outputs and in most other stations, similar to discourses about the opposition.

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Figure 8.

Civil society and opposition in the news. Note the lack of news items in MTVA and MTI.

Enemy stories

Enemy stories (framing discourse: ‘The government defends Hungary’) are a centre topic for the government and this is reflected by the news of MTVA (12% of all news items within their news output) (Figure 9). Enemy stories, mostly about migrants, are overrepresented in the state-run media. Local stations are much less interested in news about immigrants (1–4%) and immigrant news was completely absent on community stations. The main message is articulated in two Kossuth Rádió news copies: ‘More and more illegal immigrants try to cross the southern border’ (04-27, 7:00), and ‘The government defends the security of the Hungarian people’ (04-17 9:00).

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Figure 9.

Place of news producer types in the news space of enemies and friends: percentage of enemy stories and the loyalty index (ratio of direct pro-government and anti-government stories).

Political bias (loyalty index)

We calculated the ratio of direct pro-government and government-critical messages for each station type (Figure 9). Positive values show more pro-government messages. The values range from +6.5 (state-run MTVA), presenting 6.5 times more pro-government news items than government-critical ones) to −1.3 (Budapest private stations combined). Syndicated news services (MTI, Hírasztal, Oxygen) broadcast 2–4 times more pro-government news items than critical ones. MTVA is the most supportive of the government. If we take the trend of loyalty increasing towards decreasing population numbers (Budapest vs small towns), MTVA would belong to rural regions, showing the signs of ‘consensual media’, along with local and religious stations. However, the use of enemy discourses (political: Soros, Brussels, cultural: migrants, etc.) contradicts this picture and rather characterizes the totalitarian political press (comp., Kempeler, 1947). We displayed the loyalty index and migrant stories and as Figure 9 shows, MTVA is at the extreme in both categories. Religious stations and local stations show the same level of loyalty but do not push anti-migrant content.

We further separated the data into individual stations to see whether any stations aired an equal or higher number of government-critical news stories than government-favouring ones. We created a national map (Figure 10) and probed complete local radio ecosystems in typical broadcast markets: Budapest, a major city (pop.: 1.7 million), medium-sized cities (Győr, 130,000, Nyíregyháza 118,000), a town (Kaposvár 64,000) and a peripheric town Bácsalmás (7000) (Figure 11). The political bias indicator number was normalized and calculated, as (p − o)/(p + o) where p is the percentage of pro-government news items, and o is the percentage of non-pro-government news items (see codes in Supplementary material). In Budapest, only four stations were more critical than pro-government. Stations in smaller cities and towns are pro-government without exception. Stations that has been ‘anecdotally’ known as oppositional were clearly identified as oppositional even using this small set of data.

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Figure 10.

Biases in local stations: opposition and government-related news on stations with newsrooms. More messages that do not support the government (blue), balanced (green) and more pro-government messages (orange); only locally produced news, only domestic or local affairs, including religious and community stations, excluding stations where no domestic political news items were identified. National networks and those using syndicated news are excluded. Note the low sample number (10 news items on average). Music FM, the largest broadcaster with opposition bias stopped broadcasting since the study was made. Some, but not all Radio 1 stations have local newsrooms.

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Figure 11.

Political bias indicator values in different broadcast markets. A value close to zero (middle) indicates a similar number of pro- and anti-government stories. Positive values indicate pro-government bias (yellow), negative values show pro-opposition bias (blue).

Critical voices

Critical voices (Figure 12), the backbone of watchdog journalism, are rare on radio news. Stories about the opposition, even their criticism, is absent on MTVA channels, keeping the opposition invisible. The lack of critical voices is even more prevalent at local levels (Figure 13). None of the news items criticize local issues in any way.

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Figure 12.

Support and criticism of the government and the opposition in radio news, including domestic, foreign and economy-related issues.

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Figure 13.

Radio news about local affairs. Critical voices at the local level are missing across all radio markets and formats.

Discussion and conclusion

We conducted a study of radio news in Hungary investigating content, frames and local news landscapes. We assumed minimal government propaganda in the sample because the sampling dates were 2–3 weeks after the Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s victory in the general election when we suspected that propaganda was put aside. This hypothesis proved to be incorrect. We investigated the differences in radio news available in the capital city and rural regions. We found differences between these two regions.

Radio news, except for very few stations mainly in the capital city, is not a platform for watchdog journalism and amplifies the government’s ideologies, similar to many other countries (e.g. Freedman, 2018). The state media’s ideology-charged news used advanced journalistic techniques when presenting the government’s views, with colourful reports and sound bites, but only imitating investigative journalism. However, the combative discourse of MTVA (the state media conglomerate), representing the government’s political agenda, was typically not followed in other radio newsrooms, although news in 81% of Budapest-based stations and 95% of other stations supported the local or national government in 2018. Critical and balanced journalism was mainly limited to very few Budapest-based stations and could not be heard in rural areas where the choice was limited to one or two non-MTVA stations, typically broadcasting pro-government news bulletins. As a consequence of frequency allocations, in several peripherical geographic areas MTVA was the only source of information, creating one-sided, vulnerable news ecosystems. The bad news stories were typically limited to police&fire stories in local stations. MTVA and religious networks had the highest percentage of pro-government news narratives, which dominated the airwaves in rural areas. This dominance of pro-government news narratives is partly the consequence of the disappearance of independent small community and hometown stations that were pushed off the air by financial and administrative tactics, and a separate news bulletin funding scheme offered by the media authority where the most financially rational news sources are the freely offered news copies of the state-run news agency MTI.

News about ‘illegal immigrants’ was a regular ingredient of MTVA newscasts. News was dominated by positive news about the government, state and administration, or their daily activities, while in local newsrooms critical voices were non-existent, and the opposition and the civil sector remained invisible. This correlates with the results of the 2018 election, where Budapest had more opposition votes while the countryside remained predominantly pro-government. The construction of reality in the media is somewhat similar to that during the years of socialism where the state and press together built socialism and critical voices were limited by self-censorship and consensual taboos. This practice of creating positive news stories is similar to what Campbell et al. (2017) describe as ‘consensus-oriented’ journalism that, normally, characterizes the newspapers of small communities.

In contrast to our results, a quantitative analysis made by the Media Authority (NMHH, 2018b) showed that state media is politically balanced. Our finding is that both results can be true since the authority made content (or rather: subject) analysis and this study used framing discourse and other indicators to identify political bias. Journalists may produce news bulletins where political bias is difficult to detect with certain textual analysis techniques (e.g. listing the subjects mentioned in the news item) that ignore the framing in which the news stories are presented.

We determined that representation of local public affairs is politically unbalanced, and MTVA’s national news bulletins are balanced based on the political affiliations of persons appearing in the news, but unbalanced when the frames of the stories are taken into account. This shed further light on the possible cause of the elimination of the regional public service studios in 2012. At local to regional levels, no stations remained on the air with the public service requirement of balanced news: consequently, while national channels have to at least mention the names of opposition figures to keep statistical data of news content seemingly politically balanced, at a local level, where only commercial and community stations operate, the opposition could be completely erased from the electronic media.

As our quantitative results show, in early 2018, radio news bulletins dominantly broadcasted pro-government messages across the entire radio spectrum, across almost all talk and music formats, interrupting classical, pop or folk music every hour, for target demographics from young to elderly listeners, across the country, in both the state and private sectors. News supporting government ideology is almost unavoidable for those who wish to listen to music or any Hungarian talk over the air. This lack of choice, unlike in a filter bubble media model, creates a radio content continuity in which the ideological frame of the news may be sharply different from what the listener would choose. Such an unhealthy radio news ecosystem might push critical listeners towards news-free sound services such as Spotify or YouTube, contributing to the decline of radio in Hungary. As a radio critic put it in a review of a jazz program on MTVA’s classical music station (Károlyi 2020): “Luckily, there is no news at 11 PM, so we can safely wait for the broadcast”.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material

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