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Comment by sz4kerto | Hacker News Reader

Index has been a very rare example of an actually profitable online news site; it's been the oldest and most popular online media. It is worthy for the ruling party to simply destroy this value (similarly to what has happened to other big players) because they have enough public money for them anyway.

A while ago various oligarchs have bought almost all of the Hungarian media, and then donated (for free) them to a single 'non-profit' organization. Now the local newspapers looked like this before the last general election:

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

(Title: 'Vote for Fidesz')

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Looks a whole lot like Sinclair's script for stations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI

I'm not convinced US media is all that different.

On a local level, the FCC paved the way for chain-based ownership of local stations in 2003, despite research suggesting it was a bad idea[1]. That being said, the US media is different on a national level- NYT, WashPo and WSJ (investigative journalism dept, not editorial board) have shown in the past their ability to leak private government documents, take anti-government stances, and generally resist authority. While yes, WashPo is owned by Bezos, I view this differently than other cases of "an oligarch buying a newspaper". While I think we'll always need to be wary and cognizant of his ownership, it seems for now that he's bought the Post for the same reason that other billionaires get their names on schools and museum wings. I recently read Bad Blood (story of Theranos), and I was struck by how brazen the WSJ's investigative journalism department was at pursuing the story through legal threats, government stonewalling (eventually seeking out leakers), and the consequence of making their own editorial board look like fools. I think the US's journalistic integrity and freedom still stands yet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...

> A while ago various oligarchs have bought almost all of the Hungarian media

Let's not pretend this didn't already happen in the US, UK and all of Western Europe decades ago. Using derogatory terms like "oligarchs" doesn't change the story.

You're not wrong, but the big difference is who the oligarchs answer to. For instance most big French news outlet belong to various rich people, but they're all somewhat independent and are not watchdogs for the authorities. That might still cause significant conflicts of interest but it's not directly on the government's leash.

Meanwhile if you look at, say, the Echo of Moscow, a popular Russian radio, the main shareholder is Gazprom, the natural gaz company that's state-owned and has extremely close ties with the political power.

That's always the problem with this "whataboutism", it's true that there are many problems with western democracy and freedom of information but it's dishonest to say that it's the same thing. It's really not. I've been learning Russian for a few years and I read (slowly) quite a lot of Russian news and it's really unlike anything I've seen in France or the USA for instance.

> You're not wrong, but the big difference is who the oligarchs answer to. For instance most big French news outlet belong to various rich people, but they're all somewhat independent and are not watchdogs for the authorities.

Oligarchs don't answer to anyone, they just have their own interests - which in Hungary they express by aligning with the government, while elsewhere it's fine to align with one side like the media in the US do. It's not like the quality of papers like the oligarch-owned WaPo is any better, they just had to settle a major defamation lawsuit due to their "progressive" propaganda.

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-washington-post-to-pa...

Your quotation is missing the most important half of the sentence.

Let's not pretend it did. Media in US, UK and Western Europe aren't controlled by single entity. What is happening in Hungaria right now is basically getting back to socialist one-party regime, even if this time it's right-wing one (like it matters).

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