The Economist manipulated the photo of Viktor Orbán

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You got it, Sir. That is exactly right.

 

I think exactly the same, just not for organizations that are supposed to be (and present themselves as) providers of news. The Economist states this about itself:

"Orbán's coming for you" is neither fair nor objective.

A fundamental principle about news reporting in Hungary is as follows (this is my wording, not official text): present strictly only facts, and let the audience make conclusions from those facts. For example, if a person has stolen something, the news can tell: "the thief stole all the saved money of the poor grandparents", but cannot tell "the dirty criminal shamelessly stole all the money of the poor grandparents". Opinions should be formed by the audience, not by the publishers/media!

While you seem to say that you don't mind manipulated or coloured content because you can filter it, the above principle states that content should be factual, and the "colours" and conclusions should be drawn by you when you hear the facts.

 

Ah, pity there is no longer truth in advertizing:

 

It's the choice of every country what it allows and to what extent. One thing is sure: I'm happy Hungary doesn't seem to be willing to let "money" decide everything almost exclusively.

Your mentioning of "advertising" reminded me to something. Advertisements should present facts in theory (and if they present "factual" lies, they can get in trouble), but of course, the tolerance level is much higher here than in case of news reporting. This is fine, because advertisements are known to have a purpose of convincing and persuasion, while news are not about that... (In other words, people are already much more critical and doubtful about advertisements.)

 

Oh, I agree. Is The Economist an Hungarian publication?

...And who does decide for you?

 

No, and as you can see, all what could be done is drawing the attention that the photo was manipulated. My initial point in this thread wasn't that Economist should be punished in some way for this; I pointed out that it is not an objective source -- it is influenced by certain international lobbies. (OK that's probably not news for most people; still, some people seem to believe that these international newspapers are so big champions of objective and unbiased reporting.)

As for your last question, I don't get it, could you please clarify it further?

 

That may be because they agree with the Economist's PoV. I think the important thing is that both sides are "allowed" to express their particular points of view. Everyone else can decide for themselves which they believe is correct.

 

Your approach seems to encourage partial news sources, and each person can decide which to read. Everyone can find the sources that are according to his/her taste.* This is good for many types of organizations and sources, but not for sources that characterize themselves as objective and fair. It can never be equally fair to everyone when you try to manipulate the reader's emotions after presenting factual information. Nothing can ever be equally fair, but news sources should strive for presenting facts, that's the point.

*In case of political magazines, topic-specific newspapers etc., this is fine for me. But when I want to hear news when I'm in any part of the world, I'm not fond of the fact that I need to dedicate energy to seriously filter the information (or find the source that complies my TASTE) just because news sources are very partial. News sources should strive for objectivity, without representing the interests of lobby groups. This cannot be guaranteed in the reality, of course, but it is even worse that we openly accept and find it normal that even news sources are seriously biased!

 

One thing that an American needs to learn (and I imagine this is true most anywhere) is to take anything you read or hear on the news with a grain of salt. It is very easy to wrap your own agenda around "facts" and say pretty much whatever it is you want to say, and nearly everyone does this to some extent, sometimes without realizing it, sometimes oh so deliberately.

I think part of the reason some of the so-called westerners seem dismissive of this is because these practices so permeate our information sources, that's it's "almost" not worth making a big deal about a doctored picture (note that I said almost, not that it isn't).

It doesn't mean that we support these propaganda tactics; it's just that you really can't avoid them, and often it's more productive to ignore them, because, hey, life is too short to get worked up every time some bozo says or does something silly, incorrect, slanderous, etc. Why should the bozos of the world be so deserving of our attention?

 

The risk must be taken in this case, and Hungarians want to take the risk. Hungary was used for the junk storage of many organizations and countries (and as a place for sucking out money to be used to fill the local budget holes of multinational companies in their own countries), it has ended now. Rather a stronger control over media (and the risk of abuse) than a country lacking national cooperation with a media full of junk and reality shows.

And if even they abuse their power to keep out post-communist forces, it is fine! Sounds dictatoric? Then forbidding the nazi organizations is also dictatoric? Communists were never better than Nazis.

 

It sounds as if the ruling party, and the majority that supports the party, is deciding for everyone else what is allowed to be news. IMHO, that really sucks if you are not a member of the party in charge. Feel free to correct me if I'm not understanding you correctly though.

 

Chandos the Red:

Look, either the risk is taken or not. Sometimes decisions are binary: yes or no. Start a stronger democratic control, or continue following what the international "money" lobby dictates (under the disguise of freedom of speech and freedom of press). To summarize, there are cases when if you choose in favour of the minority, then it will against the will of the majority. Sometimes it is not possible to be in favour of both.

Nonetheless, during the process, the rights of minorities will not be violated (minorities in general meaning, not just in nationality meaning). Unless we consider "freedom of speech to present junk" a right.

Certain things really depend on what viewpoint we use to approach them: a right of someone can be in conflict with a different right of someone else. In such cases, usually, supporters of both parties believe that they are the "democratic" one, and that their rights are violated by the other side. These are antagonistic conflicts. One side must be chosen eventually.

If Hungary followed the "total freedom"-based politics, the chance that the country can stand up from the catastrophic situation is much lower. Simply because laws and their enforcement would not be efficient. The current, more conservative, restrictive approach increases efficiency. Those who attack it call it dictatoric: it is an exaggeration very much, even if the attackers do not believe so or do not want to admit it.

Now concretely about your statement/question:

I was telling that news should strive to be OBJECTIVE. This is not telling "what is allowed to be news". It doesn't tell WHAT can be there, it tells HOW it should be told (i.e. factually). It needs only common sense to distinguish between factual and non-factual information. "Viktor Orban in a public event in September 2010" is factual; "Orban is coming for you" is not.

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Taluntain:

The state should never tell such a thing. But an acceptable level of regulation is needed, E.g. mandatory guidelines for general channels (e.g. the minimum mandatory minutes of cultural programmes) are a good compromise. The parents role is the most important, but the state -- and the media too -- also has a responsibility for the mental education of the young generations.

First, Hungary must find its own image positive. People have been "cutting each other's throat" in the recent long years, without any unit. Orbán seems to be able to make a unit: you might tell its purely populism, but expect that many will disagree with you.

About the positive image of Hungary into the world: the "world" is often hipocritical, mostly only money matters. Compared to what we have now regarding the media law, the world didn't have the 1/100 amount of reaction to the antidemocratic, in fact, TOTALLY DICTATORIC way in 2006 when the police attacked innocent protesters. Because the shares of international companies weren't at stake; because the media and press didn't need to worry that it can't broadcast the popular junk (or lobby-influenced) content to the same extent as before. And in 2006, the police attack was totally obviously DICTATORIC. The media law, on the other hand, also has supporters (e.g. a big Polish newspaper defended Hungary lately; but I could mention the moderate opinion of Jan Mainka, or Prof. Dr. André Reszler from Geneva as well).

A country should try to be in favour of its investors, no doubt. Otherwise, no money and development will come in. But, first of all, a country should support its citizens. The people. And as opposed what the international investors imply (i.e. that people will be poor without their investments), allowing the informal control of international capital is not the only way to restore a working economy. Orbán makes a different, yet very reasonable attempt.

Not really. Nazi forces are also kept out in many countries, and it doesn't result in terrible abuses mostly.

You do not know Hungary well enough. Communism is not only about hate speech. Post-communists who provably caused much damage and intentionally participated in the dictatoric regime are here among us. Our former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany and his party consists of a lot of people who HELD IMPORTANT POSITIONS in the communist dictature until 1989. After 1989, due to their connections, they made immensely huge wealth for themselves via PRIVATIZATION. And after 2002, they could be bribed by anyone (including multinational companies). I don't say that Orbán's party is totally perfect and seamless, but if you knew Hungary, you would know that Socalists are much much more corrupt (with much less competence to make reasonable decisions).

 

As I said, the concept of fact can be defined pretty objectively within the context of news (e.g. giving attributes to people that may be emotionally influencing -- e.g. evil lawyer -- is not suitable for news). And in case you haven't noticed, I'm usually talking about tolerance levels. I.e. a certain level of non-factual reporting should be tolerated. But there are obvious cases. The photo and its caption in The Economist is an obvious example.

 

Just a note: the quotes in your last-but-one post are a bit different than my post they originate from; this is my mistake, because for better understanding, I edited that post while you were writings yours.

They controlled the media greatly during the governments between 2002-2010. Behind the scenes. The news were biased in favour of the government, and even the "humour" programmes (such as Heti Hetes) were attacking Orban even when Orban was in opposition for 8 years.

What many of those who post in my recents threads don't understand is that the independence of media in Hungary could never truly be compared to its USA or other Western counterparts. Even if INFORMALLY, but it was influenced greatly (much more than e.g. USA) by the political and economic powers. This economic lobby -- including its international relations -- is now furious to Orbán. Hence the lots of attacks.

So the notion of a free media in Hungary was just fond delusion until now. An elite lobby was always controlling it. Quoting myself from the other thread:

I prefer regulation by law (to a well-defined extent: the practice will show if the new media law needs further amendments and how many), I prefer it to the informal control of elite lobby groups.

If that needs for the nation to finally awake from its zombie state, so be it. Hungarians are a rebelling nation, they can get rid of a potential future regime with a good chance, if if it will be that bad.

 

Baronius, can I ask two questions as I don't speak Hungarian?

1) Is there an untouched photo available for comparison? The article doesn't seem to give one and the video seemed to give a movie comparison to the still photo. It's very easy for someone to look weird in a still shot when they might look normal if you were actually watching them. It might just have been the shot that was taken and the alteration mightn't have gone beyond the normal cleaning up.

2) The Economist might have bought the photo from a database rather than directly from the photographer (who doesn't seem to be theirs). If the photo is altered, do we know who altered it?