Congratulations to awarded journalists fighting for the free public media

HES Congratulates to Ms Aranka Szávuly and Mr Balázs Nagy Navarro for the Leipzig Press Award

In 2012, the shared Prize of the Leipzig Media Foundation was awarded to several winners, among them to Ms Aranka Szávuly and Mr Balázs Nagy Navarro for the press freedom, and for their fight for the freedom of the Hungarian public media. The award was founded in memory of those who were demonstrating in Leipzig every Monday in 1989 for the freedom.

The HES congratulates to these two Hungarian journalists for this prestigious recognition.

In December 2011, the HES declared solidarity with the hunger strikers for a decent Hungarian public media and concluded that "there is still a lack of guarantees against editorial censorship, although the Hungarian media law, which shook all of Europe, already exposed black and white".

The HES is sadly forced to re-establish that the Hungarian public media, despite of warnings and specific interventions of the international institutions including Council of Europe, European Commission, European Parliament and civil rights organizations, has become exposed to censors performing political orders. In order to meet the expectations of the leaders of the so called "voting cabin revolution" the Hungarian public media repeatedly violates the basic requirements of professionalism.

The decoration of the two Hungarian journalists by Leipzig Media Foundation is rightly justified by the fact that the Hungarian public media, which is financed from public money, didn't consider worth mentioning the international recognition of Ms Aranka Szávuly and Mr Balázs Nagy Navarro. This petty and cowardly procedure recalls the memory of the Kádár era's repugnant media policy.

10 July 2012