Hungarian Media Spin News from Western Europe to Fuel Fears Against Muslims and Migrants

Pro-government media outlets in Hungary inflate minor news from Western European media, carefully and exclusively selecting stories about violence committed by Muslims or migrants. These stories are repackaged to change their original meaning, presenting brutality as the norm, with the goal of endorsing the government’s anti-Muslim and anti-migration agenda. This is how news spinning works in Hungary. 

Hungarian pro-government national and local news outlets continue to regularly publish stories of incidents that happen in Western Europe with the goal of stoking fears and hatred against Muslims in Hungary.  

Origo is a previously independent outlet, acquired in 2014 by investors with ties to the far-right government of Victor Orban. In August it published two articles about France. One reported a man slaughtering a lamb in his bathroom in Southern France. The other reported the case of a Bosnian Muslim family physically punishing a teenager over her relationship with a Christian Serbian boy.  

Hirado, news website of the Hungary's publicly funded broadcasting organisation Magyar Televízió,  published an article on 29 August focusing on the damage left by a counter-protest in response to a far-right anti-Muslim rally in Sweden. The piece, titled “Freedom of expression crashes with religious freedom in Malmo, Sweden”, presents the destruction left after the counter protests, as well as describing a neighbourhood in Malmö as violent due to the large number of immigrants living there. 

Baon, a pro-government local paper of the Bács-Kiskún county, published an article about the Muslim call to prayer being allowed to be broadcasted with loudspeakers in two cities in Sweden and Germany. Without providing evidence, the piece hinted that the calls could lead to gatherings, and increase the spread of coronavirus. Using one-sided sources, it also quoted a protester saying that the muezzin singing brings the Caliphate alive and he doesn't want to live under Sharia law.  

These articles overemphasise the religion and ethnicity of the perpetrators, presenting Muslims and migrants as a monolithic group that pose a serious security threat. Article after article, this image is solidified and reinforced. 

The stories are strikingly in line with the anti-Muslim and anti-migrant agenda of the government, presenting Hungary as president Viktor Orban wants it to be seen: the last bastion against the “Islamisation” of Europe.  

The strategy of pro-government Hungarian media consists of cherry-picking stories about Muslims or immigrants in Western Europe who have committed acts of violence, spinning them to give the impression that all Muslims are violent or dangerous. In doing so, they fuel fears about what Hungary would look like if the government did not have strict immigration policies. 

Right after the Charlie Hebdo attack in 2015, Orban said on Hungarian TV: “We will never allow Hungary to become a target country for immigrants. We do not want to see significantly sized minorities with different cultural characteristics and backgrounds among us. We want to keep Hungary as Hungary.” 

Since then, Orban has deployed a concerted effort to create more loyal media coverage. As a recent report by the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom states, “the Hungarian government now can use limitless resources, including regulation, state advertising, the PSM and other hundreds of news outlets, to spread propaganda.” 

The bias in pro-government outlets was particularly evident in the run up to Hungary's general election, when the ruling party Fidesz built their campaign on a tough anti-immigration agenda. 

A study conducted by Get the Trolls Out in 2018 analysed the news stories that appeared on Origo in the month before the national elections to understand the extent to which migration was present, and how it was framed. 19 percent of the total of published articles focused on migration, with an average of 12.7 articles a day about this topic. More significantly, the vast majority of these stories focused on negative themes, such as violence, terrorism, war, and threat.  

The articles devoted particular attention to events in France and Sweden. In 2016-17 migrants committed less than one percent of crimes in Sweden, while 15 percent of the population has a migrant background. It is clear therefore, that it is not crime in Sweden that interests the editors, but the race and religion of the perpetrators.