Employees of Hungarian state television have been instructed not to include children in footage of news pieces about migrants and refugees, a leaked screenshot of editorial advice to journalists at news channel M1 reveals.

Hungary’s government-appointed Media Authority, MTVA, denied state media outlets have been told to limit public sympathy towards refugees, arguing that the memo was designed to protect children, while a pro-government journalist, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Guardian this had only been one-off instruction.



“They do show children sometimes: actually the percentage of children registered in Hungary this year is quite low, so in some opposition media they are somewhat overrepresented,” the source said.



Hungary has become a major transit country for migrants and refugees in recent months, but while M1 was quick to broadcast footage showing demonstrations outside the overcrowded transit zone at Budapest’s Keleti station over the weekend, protests against government policies on refugees have received scant coverage in state media.

Refugee solidarity group MigSzol has held mass protests against the Hungarian government’s “national consultation” on immigration and the construction of a fence along the country’s border with Serbia. However, the pro-government journalist argued that these protests have been overlooked because “MigSzol tends to campaign against some Hungarian and even EU laws regarding migration.”

The civic aid initiatives that have sprung up in lieu of co-ordinated state help have also been largely ignored by state media. The journalist said: “The NGOs helping the migrants are very political: people known from the opposition scene take part and they mix pro-migration content with criticism of the government, so pro-government, more rightwing media won’t really give (a platform) for these people … even if their work to help migrants is okay.”

Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, led by the populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has faced accusations of encroaching on independent journalism since it passed a controversial media law soon after securing its first ever parliamentary majority in 2010. The law raised “serious doubts about the compatibility of the Hungarian legislation with Union law”, the EU media commissioner said at the time.

This prompted a change of tack: Fidesz began to acquire outlets through business associates. Last year, it also introduced a progressive media advertising profit tax that seemingly targeted the country’s one remaining major independent television broadcaster, RTL. However, the plan backfired when RTL rescheduled its previously uncritical news programme to a primetime slot and recruited investigative journalists who had left independent media in protest at government interference. The European commission in March forbade Hungary from levying the tax, pending the outcome of an investigation.



The Orbán government has also flexed its financial muscle in Hungary’s print media: in the 18 months up to June 2014 the rightwing newspapers Magyar Hírlap and Magyar Nemzet received state advertisement revenues of HUF 1.5bn – more than 10 times that received by the liberal Népszabadság and Socialist Népszava, despite their higher combined circulation.

Last autumn, Orbán also touted the introduction of an internet tax, bringing 100,000 people on to the streets of Budapest to protest, after which the idea was put on ice, then scrapped, in another rare government u-turn.

While state-media supported Fidesz communications have angered the international community, which has largely deemed the border fence a failure, at home the anti-migrant rhetoric has chimed with voters and helped the party shore up its falling support. While just 3% of Hungarians considered immigration a key issue in a poll at the end of 2014 – a year in which Hungary received over 40,000 asylum applications – the Republikon Institute this week found that 66% of the population believe that “the refugees pose a danger to Hungary and therefore they shouldn’t be allowed” into the country, and just 19% agreed that “it is the duty of Hungary to accept migrants”.

“The media law provides for government control of the public channels and the private channels are heavily influenced by politics,” said Tom Popper, editor of the Budapest Business Journal. “The government’s biggest concerns are about Hungarian-language media,” he added.