How Europe’s authoritarian populists maintain the illusion of a free press

• Authoritarian leaders might be good at damaging democracy, but unless they are pure dictators they often still need to worry about winning elections.
• In the last few years, Europe has seen the rise of a number of authoritarian populists who rely on winning mass support among ordinary people – as opposed to just rigging the vote.
• It’s similar in many countries presided over by authoritarian populists.

Why media ownership matters

• Yet a closer look reveals an interesting structural feature of media ownership networks in authoritarian populist countries.
• For instance, in Hungary, the Central European Press and Media Foundation (Kesma) is a huge right-wing media conglomerate that controls more than 500 national and local media outlets.
• Kesma was established in 2018, when most pro-government private media owners transferred their ownership rights to the foundation, which is headed by a board of trustees full of Orbán loyalists closely associated to the ruling party.

Love your enemies

• You might expect authoritarian populist governments to be more like the old totalitarian regimes which pulled out all the stops to silence any dissenting voices.
• This was the strategy of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin.
• It’s also convenient for an authoritarian regime to set up an “us versus them” situation, where “they” can be vilified and ridiculed by regime-friendly media.
• In Hungary, for instance – in a wider strategy to discredit independent media news – pro-government media outlets have launched smear campaigns against independent media outlets funded by international grants.
• This allows them to set up internal enemies as a target for their supporters.