51could pack the court with sympathetic
judges. He also chipped away at its
authority: among other assaults, in
2013, the Fidesz-dominated parliament
voted to strip the Constitutional Court
o the ability to review laws concern-
ing state nances and wrote directly
into the constitution a number o
Fidesz-backed laws that the court had
previously overturned.
The media were also in Orban’s sights.
Orban blamed his party’s defeat in 2002
on the publicly funded media networks
and had long dreamed o hobbling them.
With parliament’s support, he brought
together all the government-funded
television and radio networks under a new
conglomerate run by Fidesz supporters.
He then established a centralized media
authority to oversee the organization
and named trusted Fidesz o
cials to
run it, giving them nine-year terms. As
a result, the public networks are more
tightly supervised today than they were
in the nal period o the communist
regime. Hungary’s position on the
World Press Freedom Index, compiled
by Reporters Without Borders, has
plummeted from 23rd in 2010, when
Fidesz took power, to 87th this year—one
notch below Sierra Leone.
A further erosion o press freedom
occurred last year, when all pro-Fidesz
media owners “donated” their holdings
to a new structure run by three o
Orban’s most trusted lieutenants. Dubbed
the Central European Press and Media
Foundation, the organization now
consists o 476 media outlets. The
government has exempted it from legal
scrutiny and from regulations governing
the concentration o media holdings.
Except for one television station owned
by a German company, a small radio“Ross and Makovsky have done a real
service.... They tell the story of Ben-Gurion,
Begin, Rabin and Sharon... [and] provide
guidance for today’s leaders in Israel and for
all of us on the meaning of leadership.”
—Hillary Rodham Clinton,
67th US secretary of state
“A powerful statement on the style and
principles of leadership that are critical for
shaping the Middle East peace process.”
—Henry Kissinger,
56th US secretary of stateAvailable in hardcover, audio, and ebook fromThe MORAL and
POLITICAL COURAGE
of ISRAEL’s
FOUNDING FATHERS
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