The mayor's newspaper

Hungary's local press is largely in the hands of municipal authorities. This means that the respective city council decides who heads editorial desks, and editors-in-chief are very much aware of the fact that their future depends on the will of the majority in the city council. There can be no talk of journalistic independence or the public exercising a controlling function in such cases, journalist Tamás Bod points out: "Just under 20 years since the fall of communism, it's still unclear who owns the local newspapers: the entire nation, the city council, the majority on the city council or the mayor himself? In most cases one can observe that the mayor, or at best the majority on the city council, decides what is written and how it's written in these newspapers - which are financed with public money! ... Without doubt the level of political pressure varies, just as there are differences between the regional newspapers, but the situation is nonetheless absurd."

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