Hungary's pro-government media machine has recently launched a massive smear campaign against 444.hu and Bellingcat (NL), while also targeting their international partners, PressOne (RO), Gazeta Wyborcza (PL), and SME (SK). These outlets cooperate in a cross-border journalistic project, The Eastern Frontier Initiative (TEFI) covering regional security, co-financed by the European Commission.
The so-called "Sovereignty Protection Authority" will be an arbitrarily appointed body with unlimited powers, operating without any oversight. A joint statement by independent Hungarian papers in response to the newly adopted Sovereignty Protection Bill.
The decision hit organizations that see education as a great equalizer that can lift children from poverty - says Nóra Ritók, founder and director of the Igazgyöngy Alapítvány, which runs six art centers and offers extracurricular activities for about 600 disadvantaged children each year.
Over the past decade a growing narrative has gained traction in Hungary, calling on women to embrace their fate as homemakers and caretakers as Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the self-appointed defender of Europe’s Christian values has steered the country towards a conservative, in his words “illiberal democracy.”