The Netanyahu government's reckless proposals to end judicial autonomy in Israel are rightfully grabbing headlines and provoking mass protest. But recent Hungarian experience shows that seemingly technical changes aimed at privatizing and restructuring publicly funded institutions are equally devastating for democracy, especially when they target the media and universities.
Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi’s stated intentions to privatize Israel's public media sound like a typical free-market proposal. He has suggested that privatization would produce a media environment less "biased towards the left."
But this is an insidious proposal. Karhi and others will have learned from the Hungarian model that privatization can be used for powerful political ends, and that to be effective, reforms need to happen in record speed.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán killed Hungary's independent media and universities through privatization. Media and academia make up the fourth pillar anchoring a democratic society. They shine a light on those holding political and economic power and inform citizens.
Orbán’s media take-over has been brilliantly executed. In 2010, he established a new Media Council to oversee the regulatory environment of the country's media. Members of the Media Council are appointed exclusively by the government. They are all Orbán loyalists.
The Media Council manages the government distribution of private media licenses. Media rights, and radio and television frequency renewal applications from independent media outlets, have been rejected by the Media Council. To fill this ‘empty’ space, tenders have been awarded to those private media corporations that accept the rules of the Orbán game.
These rules are unspoken, but clear. Stay loyal to the government, forget about media independence and abstain from serious investigative journalism, and the Media Council will enable your media corporation to make ample profits and capture the market for journalists.
The government is a major source of revenue for these media outlets due to its constant purchase of advertising space. It is through private media advertising space that the government blankets Hungary with political propaganda.
The reporters from these supposedly "independent" (because not formally state-owned) media are also given access to government sources, creating a mutually enforcing environment of private media making profits by spreading government propaganda. In the name of free market principles and preventing monopolies, the same Media Council also blocks proposed mergers between still-critical independent media to ensure their continued enfeeblement.
Since these 2010 reforms, Hungary has dropped down the international rankings assessing media freedom. This is even more worrying for Israel which already places lower than Hungary in those world press freedom rankings.
Similar reforms happened in the public university sector. Most public universities have been restructured to be headed by private foundations, whose leadership is primarily appointed directly by the Orbán government. They determine budgets and university priorities, and now mainly support research which is deemed to contribute to national economic competitiveness. Critical social sciences and humanities have been decimated in the process.
It is difficult to pin down clear violations of freedom of expression since many of these changes look like technical solutions for enhancing competition and cost efficiency. As I have argued before, Orbán has destroyed Hungarian democracy through engineering Hungary’s capitalist market, and without political violence.
Although the European Commission is finally starting to take action against Hungary by blocking pandemic recovery funds until Hungary proves it is complying with the rule of law, these actions are too little and too late. Orbán’s government only needs to make a few small reforms to show that competition is correctly managed and complying with EU law.
Hungary's free media and independent universities are now destroyed, and it would take years under a very different regime to bring them back to life.
There would be even fewer controls over Netanyahu if similar reforms were to be implemented in Israel. So long as Israel enjoys its protected status as a strategic extension of the security interests of NATO and the US, no international alliances will hold Netanyahu back on reforms that can be spun to resemble the promotion of market competition.
Privatization of the media and academia is democracy’s death by a thousand cuts. If you care about Israel’s democratic future, you must resist the Netanyahu government’s privatization 'reforms' as much as its proposed judicial 'reforms.'
Dr. Dorit Geva is Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University, Vienna. She was Dean of Undergraduate Studies at CEU when the university was kicked out of Hungary by the Orbán government. She is a B.A. graduate of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Twitter: @socioeurope
Israel, Be Warned: This Is How You'll Turn Into Orban's Hungary
The Netanyahu government's reckless proposals to end judicial autonomy in Israel are rightfully grabbing headlines and provoking mass protest. But recent Hungarian experience shows that seemingly technical changes aimed at privatizing and restructuring publicly funded institutions are equally devastating for democracy, especially when they target the media and universities.
Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi’s stated intentions to privatize Israel's public media sound like a typical free-market proposal. He has suggested that privatization would produce a media environment less "biased towards the left."
But this is an insidious proposal. Karhi and others will have learned from the Hungarian model that privatization can be used for powerful political ends, and that to be effective, reforms need to happen in record speed.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán killed Hungary's independent media and universities through privatization. Media and academia make up the fourth pillar anchoring a democratic society. They shine a light on those holding political and economic power and inform citizens.
Orbán’s media take-over has been brilliantly executed. In 2010, he established a new Media Council to oversee the regulatory environment of the country's........
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