In a faculty research seminar on June 4, Visiting Professor Péter Bajomi-Lázár explained reasons behind political party colonization of media in Central and Eastern Europe. In his recent research, Bajomi-Lázár has delved into why there is a media freedom deficit in Eastern Europe as compared to Western Europe, as well as why media freedom fluctuates over time within and across post-communist countries.
According to Bajomi-Lázár, there is decreasing media freedom in the majority of third wave democracies in Europe. He noted that the status of media freedom has declined in eight out of 10 former communist countries acceding to the EU. “In many of these countries,” Bajomi-Lázár explained, “new parliamentary majorities tend to pass new media regulations, which result in changes in media freedom.”
Bajomi-Lázár went on to explain the explicit link between government and media. Election laws, he argued, shape political systems. Political systems in turn shape both political parties and media. This relationship between political systems and media is key to understanding why media freedom has decreased in Central and Eastern Europe. “Political parties are more consolidated and stable in Western Europe,” Bajomi-Lázár noted. “In Eastern Europe, political parties merge and change more frequently, and even switch ideologies in some cases. Parties in the ‘East’ are poorly embedded in society and therefore lack the resources needed for party building and organization.”
“In post-communist countries, we find many examples of political parties attempting to capture the media,” he said. “I call this ‘party colonization of the media.’” Political parties want to control the media, he continued, to have greater access to important resources like secure government jobs at national media outlets, TV and radio airwaves, and sizeable public budgets. He cited the example of Hungary, where over 0.4% of the GDP is allocated to media, which has been captured by the ruling party and has been channelled to party loyalists.
Analyzing data from five post-communist countries, Bajomi-Lázár argued that the level of media freedom is related to patterns of party colonization. In countries where one political party dominates, such as is the case with the Orbán government in Hungary, the level of media freedom is low. Conversely, in countries with a multi-party colonization pattern without a dominant party such as the Horn government in Hungary, the level of media freedom is high.
The reasons why media freedom fluctuates within and across some post-communist countries is nuanced, Bajomi-Lázár posited. There are a number of independent variables including institutional frameworks, cultural values, the role of journalists in society, media ownership, economic conditions, and external factors such as pressure from multilateral organizations. Bajomi-Lázár highlighted that only two of these factors change regularly: institutional frameworks as new governments come to power, and cultural values, which are reflected in the changing governments.
“The ultimate factors behind levels of media freedom are tied to a country’s constitutional framework and election system,” Bajomi-Lázár concluded. “Real media policy reform requires reform of the political system.”