Vienna — The OSCE’s media freedom watchdog has warned that emergency powers adopted in Hungary to fight the coronavirus could be turned against journalists, in one of the sharpest interventions yet over governments using the pandemic to squeeze the press.
Harlem Désir, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, wrote to Budapest this week after the Hungarian parliament handed Prime Minister Viktor Orbán the power to rule by decree with no time limit. The law, passed on 30 March, also creates a new criminal offence: spreading false or distorted information about the virus or government measures, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Désir said he recognised the exceptional circumstances created by COVID-19, but argued that vaguely worded provisions on ‘false’ information risk criminalising legitimate journalism and critical reporting at precisely the moment the public needs independent scrutiny most. A state of emergency, he cautioned, must not become a state of permanent exception for the media.
Hungary is not alone in attracting the Representative’s attention. In the three weeks since the pandemic was declared, his office has issued statements on restrictions in several OSCE participating states, from limits on journalists’ access to officials and health facilities to prosecutions over coronavirus reporting. A running tracker of government measures affecting media freedom is being compiled by his office.
The Hungarian government has dismissed the criticism as politically motivated, insisting the law is temporary in effect if not in wording and that other European states have adopted comparable measures. Government officials note that the parliament, where the ruling party holds a two-thirds majority, can revoke the special powers at any time.
For the Vienna-based organisation, the episode is an early test of a question likely to define this year: whether the public health emergency becomes a pretext for durable restrictions on rights the OSCE was created to defend. Désir’s answer, in his letter to Budapest, is that free and independent media are not an obstacle to fighting the virus but part of the fight — a line that many governments in the region appear in no hurry to endorse.
Media-Society.com is a press network association based in Spain, founded in 2020. More at www.media-society.com.
