The Economist manipulated the photo of Viktor Orbán

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Ok, I thought you were directing that at everyone who disagreed with you on those photos. It's good to know that we can disagree without being uncivil. Because on this thread I believe you are really wrong about those photos. I don't know much about your leader, since it appears that there are some good things and bad things about him, which is typical, and I am treating the media law and the charges of manipulated photos as two completely different issues. Nevertheless, I believe the charges against the Economist are bogus.

As Tal points out, your leader is already willing to make changes to the media law, and I think that is better than, "If you aren't with us, you are against us," as one of our leaders once remarked.

 

I did want to chime in on this comment, Baronius. DMC may be a lawyer, but he is perhpas one of the most reasonable, impartial people on the boards when it comes to politcal debates. I have never known him to be arrogant, nor condescending to anyone on the board in a disagreement. I'm not trying to be disrepectful towards you, but you might want to reconsider by reading his post without the overly defensive posture you have shown towards anyone who is critical of the situation regarding Hungary. Just my

 

Hvala, Tal!

Chandos:

I give respect to everyone by default (ok, with obvious exceptions, like terrorists). But in my country, if you attack self-confidently the opinion of someone who is most likely more experienced or competent in the matter, it is considered a great offense and disrespect. Don't get it wrong: while you shouldn't attack, you can still criticize it entirely, just with a tactful, humble tone. And in my country, if you are tactless about an opinion, you are personally tactless to its author as well. I'm aware of the fact this may not be entirely so in other cultures and countries, but to a certain extent, I insist (and expect from my communication partners) that tact is given to each other. (True that I don't seem to be too tactful in my harsh replies -- but what happens first? That my opinion is considered "rubbish" just because it's also based on implicit expertise). Moreover, let me emphasize that logical arguments and arguing are fine everywhere (i.e. even a student is also encouraged to argue against the opinion of a full professor with factual arguments), but the problem often is that pure logic fails in many practical cases, while implicit expertise and experience includes additional things as well. (Refer to my post about manager competence, for example.) For example, I know very well two things: (1) Orbán is not going to become a dictator, this is 90% (and that's a nice chance in politics; even if lawyers don't like it, the world is never 0% and 100%; risk is needed sometimes and not avoidable). (2) The Hungarian nation is ready to take the risk now (the truth is, most people really don't care of the media law or if they care and disagree with it, they would still not protest against it because Orbán is doing much more important things to them; there are much deeper economic problems).

So I'm pretty sure about (1) and (2) above. Dmc and anyone can freely disagree with me without becoming disrespectful to me, but refusing my viewpoints self-confidently and tactlessly just because my arguments are not considered valid by him makes a very negative impression about certain features of his personality. Sometimes you just need to say: he probably knows it because he has implicit knowledge. (Or if you think the person in question does NOT know it despite of his experience/expertise/reputation, you still should be tactful with him and his viewpoints.) Do CEO candidates make entrance exams? No, no. Their past is considered, their achievements, mostly. So when viewing someone's opinion critically, not purely the content (WHAT he says) should be considered, but also WHO says it. This is not autoritative, this is a "common" truth; in Hungary, there is a saying: "What matters is not what he says, but who says it" (obviously, it is exaggerating and not really correct logically, but it illustrates the point). Yeah, it's also fine to say that "Baronius is not considered a priori more credible to me about Hungary than others", but that doesn't mean you are free to be tactless about my opinion. Or if you choose to do so, then don't be surprised that my reaction is impulsive in many cases.

Finally, let me examine a bit why many many Hungarian people are ready to take the (IMO very small) risk of too authoritative government(s): the life standard is not so good, many people have big problems. While you there in USA find it normal that you can buy food, pay your bills, pay for medical services, get a job (which is -- correct me if I'm wrong -- practically guaranteed to people with a college/uni degree; not in Hungary!) In the USA, if you work honestly, it has a very high chance that you won't starve or have basic life standard problems (again, you know this better than me; correct me if I'm wrong). In Western countries, you need to have a bad luck to be really poor if you are able and willing to work honestly. Not in Hungary. What people have seen in the past 8 years of the Socialist government is that cheating is GENERALLY more prosperous than hard work. People lost motivation. People lost hope. So they take risks now (again, IMO, there are no true risks, but I respect that others may disagree with me), and they really don't care that much about how precise or broad a media law is.

I know some readers now may say: "ah, so the bad situation of people makes them think in the way you described; beware, because it means they will support extremism in their desperacy -- see how NSDAP got power -- so a dictatoric or extremist regime/governing may appear in Hungary!" This is where my knowledge comes in: there will be no extremist or fascist leadership here. It has several reasons and analysing them would be a lot of time and text now. It has its reasons, so noone needs to be afraid that -- with or without Fidesz -- there will be a true dictature in Hungary. If the very very small chance of it makes it happen, then that will be another situation; Hungarians are a rebelling and stubborn nation, they will solve it somehow. Now, the best way is to give a chance to Orbán. To do something with Hungary.

All in all, you there in USA have much time to worry about freedom of speech of Hungary, because most of you don't have problems with basic life standard. Hungarians are focusing on much more serious matters, because their own life standard and happiness is at stake. And no, the chance that it may end up in extremist dictature is negligible in practice.

Back to your advice about dmc: he practically told that my expertise absolutely does not matter to him (this is tactless in advance). Then he said practically that I'm not a fortune teller. These two points make it very obvious that he doesn't care that experience can indeed give you better prediction and judgement capabilities than those have who are less experienced. What matters more when choosing a CEO: his experience and reputation, or whether he is PhD/DSc/etc. and teaches management in university? The latter matters, but much much less than the first.

 

Hey Baronius,
Not for nothin' buddy, but....stop digging.

 

I am reminded of the gay marriage thread from about a year ago, except Baronious has taken on Gnarfflinger's role.

 

If a law has features that invite abuse, practice doesn't matter. That it can be abused is is already establishing the chilling effect.

All it takes is the application of the law directed against a couple organisations with steep fines, maybe wreck some small newspaper or radio station, and the rest will fall in line because they don't want to test how far the Media Council actually wants to exercise their substantial leeway.

dmc is right, your trust in Orbán to not abuse that law that he had his majority pass may well be utterly misplaced. What do you do when that becomes apparent even to you? Suck it up, because conformity is safe? Oh yes, I got it, that doesn't matter because dear leader won't let that happen.

 

I can help.

 

But what when the press muddies the clear waters of truth? What when the press, pettily and spitefully, abuses their freedom by badmouthing dear leader and his wise and just policies?!

The agitation it produces must be submitted to? Well, not with a 2/3 majority in the Hungarian parliament. Then something can be done about that.

 

Well, yes. A pandering, confomrist press can have the expected results:

 

Chandos, the same is true to press that conforms to the interests of certain political groups (e.g. the most popular channel in Hungary, RTL Klub, has been serving the interests of the Socialist party, the opponent of Orbán's party, Fidesz). Because PEOPLE TEND TO BELIEVE WHAT THEY READ AND HEAR. So the media has an enormous influence. If the most popular channel promotes socialists (even if in subtle ways), people will start to think that indeed socialists are the solution to every problem. People can filter, but generally -- and no matter where in the world -- media/press can have an enormous influence on people. If it's under the informal control of political groups from behind the scenes, it can result in horrible -- but silent! -- abuses.

May be terrible, but is there another way? So sometimes such laws are overly criticized by citizens who even don't know how difficult organizing national security can be in a democratic country (as opposed to dictatures where they can maintain files about your daily habits). I quote myself from another thread (which I wasn't too familiar with, so my thoughts didn't prove to be on-topic):

It can be very hard to find the balance between overly restricting freedom and ensuring national security. To avoid abuse, while still give tools to the hands of anti-terrorist organs. Finding this critical balance sometimes makes such freedom-restricting laws unavoidable!

There are much worse ways for the media/press to abuse its freedom than just badmouthing politicians. Actually, one of the worst is when they represent the interests of politicians and parties who control them from behind the scenes. For example, the RTL Klub (the most watched TV channel in entire Hungary) has been greatly representing the interests of the Hungarian Socialist Party, it has been totally biased. This is not freedom.

The freedom the media/press can abuse is much more than badmouthing and such things, this is obvious.

What is the difference between the "informal", hardly-visible control of media by certain groups and politicians (this was until now) and a stronger legal control (e.g. by an "EU-conform" future version of the Hungarian media law)?

The first is not even regulated at all (because it is based on informal agreements, political lobbies, owner relations, etc.), so in many cases it is even illegitim (or in worst case, illegal). Since it's not regulated by law, treating the problems is impossible or very difficult & not efficient (those who start trials e.g. can rely on other laws, indirectly).

The second is regulated by an admittedly strong law. Which, according to certain views, allows abuse. But the decisions of the Media Council can be attacked in court. The fine even does not need to be paid immediately in this case. (On a side note, this fact alone disproves one of the most stupid accusations on the media law, i.e. that "it can be make organizations go bankrupt by the very high fines".) Moreover, the law serves interests of the society as well, e.g. protects children much more than before. In much more severe cases as well than just putting Ice-T after 9 PM (which, unlike Ragusa incorrectly spread it, even wasn't investigated based on the new media law; the old one was applied).

So rather a strong but democratic media regulation (which can be amended, depending how its practical application goes), than the informal power of political groups. And I can assure you that the political influence to media in Central Europe is much stronger than e.g. in the USA.

 

Isn't socialistic media a bit of an oxymoron? The media is commersial and corporate, socialists wants to spread wealth and limit the power and influence of the commersial and corporate sector thus private media tend to favour non-restraining politicians who advocate low taxes and few media restrictions. I know that more or less all socialistic media has died out on the Swedish market simply due to lack of capital while the big liberal media corporations has taken pretty much the entire market. Why would a company advertise in a media outlet who wants to limit the profit of said company?

What I do know and have seen especially in the US is that politicians on the far right tend to view reasonably neutral reporting as negative and biased and that anything critical of them is unfair and unbalanced. There is nothing that can be so oppressed and unfairly treated as a right wing politician.

 

In Hungary and in some other countries too, "socialists" are not anymore what their ideology would dictate. Instead, they do whatever they need to get back the power, without having any vision, consistent concept about what they want to accomplish and how. Consequently,

is true only in theory. In practice, e.g. in Hungary, they were doing the opposite in most cases (since 2002). For example, they offered huge tax discounts to multinational companies while not to local Hungarian companies (with the reason that multionational companies must be lured here to create new jobs for people, which in itself was not a totally senseless idea, but had other side effects; now Orbán tries to help on this too by giving EQUAL chances to local companies as well).

And let me tell here to everyone how Socialists in Hungary got their power after 1989 (and from 2002, as we know, they managed to govern for 8 years and ruin the country). There is a thing in post-communist countries called PRIVATIZATION. After 1989, the process started in Central European countries, including Hungary. With lots of cheats. People who had great connections in the state managed to ABUSE privatization (I won't detail the techniques here). These people made fortunes, HUGE wealth, during privatizations. E.g. our former prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, got his wealth in this way in the 1990's. Note that others got much much bigger wealth than Gyurcsany (his cca. 5 million dollars of wealth is considered small in Central Europe among those who filled their pockets from privatizations). Some years ago, my father told me about a person who made $15000 per day (read again: per day) on average, due to privatization and his machinations (on a side note, this person was the former CEO of a company that was later bought by US Steel). When reading $15000, don't forget to take into account that we are talking of the 1990's regarding the value of USD, not 2011.

So how they got so big political power in 2002? They basically transformed their ECONOMIC power to POLITICAL power. To be brief: they made power from Money. Buying influence in the media, making huge populist political campaigns, buying companies and financing organizations, etc. The case what Chandos implied in another thread: affording to have an own media...

To summarize: when needed, socialists here gave up and still give up their socialist ideology behind the scenes.

 

Not wanting to spoil a good story, but never mind privatisation - the Hungarian socialists came to power in 1994, 2002 and 2006 (beating Fidecz and Orbán admittedly by a very small margin of 0,5%, which they had a hard time to accept) by popular vote. They were beaten by Fidecz and Jobbik on such a momentous scale in 2010 because of a monumental blunder on behalf of Hungary's then Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany in 2006, on which Fidecz especially was able to capitalise.

You can talk about the excesses of privatisation until you're blue in the face but they didn't grab power as your narrative suggests, they were voted into office.

 

2002-2006 and 2006-2010 are often referred to as 2002-2010 (in 2006, they won because in the 4 years beforehand, they applied populist changes which made the treasury totally empty and ruined the economy, which they lied about, of course).

You do not get it.

And don't misrepresent me, I implied nowhere that they "grabbed" power. They won in elections, but huge misleading political campaigns need a lot of money, no? Controlling the media, and media advertisements (e.g. before the 2006 elections) need money, no?

Don't pretend to be naive. You might mislead the younger readers of this forum. Nowadays, you can influence EVERYTHING with money, except your health and happiness (for health, money may matter in certain cases). Yes, you can control countries, control medias. Or you can ruin the currency of a country (as the Hungarian-American billionare George Soros did with the British Pound ).

Consequently, the whole thing can be translated to:
- the one who has the most money can have the most expensive campaign
- the one who has the most money can buy or influence the most media and press groups
- the one who has the most money can buy the best positions wherever possible

Privatizations put dollar billions altogether to the pockets of many people. That's a good capital for Socialists to start with.

Again trying to be clever with regard to things you don't know, eh? You know what privatizations meant in my country better than myself? Hahaha.

As I pointed out twice to you already in past days in the media law-related threads, it's still called Fidesz.

 

I am so sorry Baronius, I apparently totally misread ...

Right, you never implied a power grab. You spelled it out pretty much explicitly. My mistake.

 

The bold statement you quote from me is only INACCURATE or UNCLEAR even in the worst case, but definitely not implying that there was a coup or anything provably illegal. Nonetheless, I think that even a minimal level of education is sufficient to understand that a party with an apparently-not-yet-negative past and with huge financial resources in a post-communist country has a good chance to win the elections. It also doesn't need much intelligence to see that my words were referring to this; and if someone feels it wasn't obvious, he could have asked for further clarification; so even in the worst case, they were only unclear.

This is where humble approach comes in. You could have asked what I mean by it. But you chose to "misread" it so you can immediately be "important" and "clever". I remember years ago you were banned from here, but I don't know why it was (I didn't really care that much), maybe it was your big mouth All in all, you chose to misrepresent my point to be able to criticize it...

 

Baronius,
re: 'misread' - somebody (your dad perhaps?), some day, really needs to introduce to you the concepts of sarcasm and irony. I didn't mean what I wrote literally.

 

I know... Someone should teach you that using quotation marks ("misread") also gives a special meaning to the enclosed term. Moreover:

It wasn't illegal, but yes, it was (much worse than merely) unscrupulous. If you mean it in the latter meaning, then yes, they grabbed the power. Via elections. Due to money and lies. Lies without financial support (money) wouldn't have reached their goal. And the money was mostly dirty.