In a study made public in Berlin on Thursday, the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) states that reports on Hungary in many German and international press and media outlets are partly incomplete, one-sided and sometimes contain false content; as a result readers are receiving a distorted image of Hungary.

According to the conclusions of the prestigious research institute’s study (entitled “Hungary in the Media 2010-2014 – Critical Reflections on Coverage in the Press and Media”), German political and public life “is increasingly accepting” a “distorted image” emerging from media reports. In contrast with this image, the report states, “Hungary continues to be a free and democratic state under the rule of law, in which the press is not subject to censorship, the institutional independence of the judiciary is guaranteed, and in which the Orbán government does not support anti-Semitism”.

In speaking about the work which began in mid-2013, the president of DGAP’s Hungary research group, Klaus von Dohnanyi, former German federal Minister of Education and Science, former First Mayor of Hamburg, a politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) highlighted at the presentation of the study that they analysed coverage on Hungary on the basis of an independent approach, with the involvement of Hungarian and German experts. They primarily focused on the most important claims made in coverage released in the German press which adopted a critical tone of Hungary, and as part of this, they identified nine principal subject-matters, including rule of law, the separation of powers, the franchise, anti-Semitism and homelessness.

He stressed: they came to the conclusion that the “core critical claims” which unfold from the coverage are “untenable”.

A guest of the event, Boris Kálnoky, a correspondent of the German conservative newspaper Die Welt, who also covers Hungary, pointed out that DGAP has done the work that journalists should have done, as the task force “researched the truth”, uncovered and verified the data relevant to the subject-matter, interviewed experts, and published its findings in an easy-to-understand form.

Boris Kálnoky took the view that, in contrast to the English- and French-language press, the reader “cannot obtain fair and objective information” on Hungary from the German press, and on occasion, what is published about certain issues is nothing short of “merely stirring up negative emotions”, and the reports on anti-Semitism in Hungary reflect more on the Germans than on the Hungarians.

At the event attended by an audience of some 60, including diplomats and researchers, Boris Kálnoky said that the unfounded and unjustifiably harsh criticisms “only make Orbán stronger” at the end of the day, and therefore the authors of reports of this nature effectively constitute „a team of electoral aides for Orbán”. He highlighted that the Hungarians are “infinitely disappointed and bitter” about the Germans on account of the criticisms coming from Germany.

According to the report on the DGAP research, “as the reports often contain a mixture of errors, omissions and political bias, there is no way of deciphering from them on the one hand to what extent processes taking place in Hungary actually violate Europe’s core democratic values, and on the other hand the phenomena which are merely different from those people in Germany are accustomed to”.

Phenomena which may be different from the customary should not be “branded either as anti-democratic, or as contrary to European values but should be accepted as a way of respecting the principle of state sovereignty”, the research group stressed.

According to the recommendations made in the research report which was also published on the website of DGAP, the quality of coverage could be improved if, inter alia, journalists verified their information more thoroughly, interviewed politically independent experts on the issues at hand, and also spoke to “the experts of the given areas”, in addition to “Hungarian intellectuals also widely known in Germany” and Hungarian immigrants living in Germany.

(Prime Minister's Office)