Right-wing Hungarian newspaper’s readership falls dramatically

The Magyar Nemzet daily newspaper was long the jewel in the crown of the pro-Orbán media empire, but ever since the paper’s owner, Lajos Simicska, found himself in a singularly nasty and foulmouthed dispute with the prime minister (who was his college roommate decades ago and long-time friend), government officials and ministers have been boycotting the media magnate, and there are plans to create a new, anti-Simicska media group. The dispute likely explains at least in part why the paper’s readership is falling so rapidly. Never has the Magyar Nemzet seen such a decline in readers as it did in the first quarter of the year, when it shed over 6% of its readership within just three months, according to the website Menedzsment Fórum (MFOR). The right-wing paper now sells just 33,129 copies per day. When compared to last spring, Magyar Nemzet has lost over 12% of its readers.

Magyar Nemzet. Photo: Hír24.

Magyar Nemzet. Photo: Hír24.

The country’s two major left-centre print dailies — Népszabadság and Népszava — have seen their readership drop by 2.3% and 3.6% respectively in the first quarter. Although this isn’t great news for the future of left-centre print media in Hungary, the drop is more in line with general trends and the move to digital news, as opposed to the sudden collapse in readership that is being seen around Magyar Nemzet. It’s worth noting that up until now, Magyar Nemzet has done a better job of retaining its readership than its competitors, but all this has changed dramatically, following the dispute between its owner and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Népszabadság remains the country’s largest political print daily paper, with 41,736 copies sold per day, while Népszava is a distant third with 13,344 copies purchased each day. Interestingly, MFOR did not report on how the extremist, far-right Magyar Hírlap was doing, though the paper’s readership is even smaller than that of Népszava.

The only print publications that are actually doing better are a political weekly entitled Figyelő (which saw its readership jump by 12% in a year and by 5% this past quarter), and a handful of tabloid papers, notably Bors (+1.1%), Best (+8.9%) and Story (+8.9%).

Perhaps growing numbers of Hungarian are cluing out of politics and are turning to the world of light entertainment.

That having been said, Mr. Orbán’s shady and inexplicably wealthy adviser, Árpád Habonyi has launched his new local news site, called Lokál.hu, which replaces the bankrupt Helyi Téma free circulation publication. Both the previous paper and Lokál.hu are staunchly pro-government, although they do focus primarily on municipal and entertainment or pop culture news. Lokál is published by a company called Modern Media Group, and is owned by two men close to the prime minister: Mr. Habonyi, the current adviser, and Tibor Győri, who was director in the Prime Minister’s Office between 2010 and 2014.

What’s clear is that pro-government media is in a state of flux not seen since at least the 1990’s.

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