Pro-Orban Group Buys Hungary Tabloid Before Elections

A pro-Orban group pur­chased Hun­gary’s most-read tabloid in a media con­sol­i­da­tion move just months before nation­al elec­tions. On 31 Octo­ber 2025, Agence France-Presse report­ed that Swiss media com­pa­ny Ringi­er sold its Hun­gar­i­an media divi­sion includ­ing tabloid Blikk to Inda­me­dia, a group seen as close to Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban’s Fidesz par­ty, prompt­ing oppo­si­tion leader Peter Mag­yar to accuse the gov­ern­ment of tak­ing over remain­ing major media out­lets. The arti­cle begins:

Swiss media com­pa­ny Ringi­er announced Fri­day that it has sold Hun­gary’s most-read tabloid and oth­er major pub­li­ca­tions to a Hun­gar­i­an group seen as close to Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban’s Fidesz par­ty. Since Orban’s return to pow­er in 2010, many inde­pen­dent media out­lets in Hun­gary have either gone out of busi­ness or been bought by his busi­ness allies and turned into pro-Fidesz organs, while pub­lic media have been forced to toe the gov­ern­ment line. The announce­ment of Ringier’s sale of its Hun­gar­i­an media divi­sion to Hun­gary’s Inda­me­dia group comes less than six months ahead of nation­al elec­tions in spring, where Orban is fac­ing an unprece­dent­ed chal­lenge to his 15-year pre­mier­ship from an oppo­si­tion leader. Hun­gary’s most-read tabloid Blikk is among the titles acquired by Inda­me­dia. As one of the top five news sites in the Cen­tral Euro­pean coun­try of 9.5 mil­lion, Blikk reach­es about 3 mil­lion online read­ers month­ly, accord­ing to the Nation­al Media and Info­com­mu­ni­ca­tions Authority.

Read more: https://courthousenews.com/pro-orban-group-buys-top-hungary-tabloid-from-swiss-owner/

Key Points

• Inda­me­dia acquired Blikk, Hun­gary’s most-read tabloid reach­ing approx­i­mate­ly 3 mil­lion online read­ers month­ly, along with a wom­en’s mag­a­zine, an online health por­tal, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions from Swiss com­pa­ny Ringier.
• Oppo­si­tion leader Peter Mag­yar accused Fidesz of tak­ing over remain­ing major media out­lets, stat­ing that Orban and his allies are so ter­ri­fied of los­ing the elec­tion they are no longer try­ing to keep up appearances.
• Inda­me­di­a’s flag­ship pub­li­ca­tion Index made inter­na­tion­al news in 2020 when jour­nal­ists resigned en masse over alleged polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, months after a pow­er­ful pro-Orban busi­ness­man acquired a 50% share in the company.
• Since Orban’s return to pow­er in 2010, many inde­pen­dent media out­lets in Hun­gary have either gone out of busi­ness or been bought by his busi­ness allies and turned into pro-Fidesz organs.

Global National Conservative Alliance: Media Control as Blueprint for Authoritarian Power

The Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance unites right-wing move­ments world­wide under prin­ci­ples of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty and oppo­si­tion to glob­al insti­tu­tions, with Hun­gary serv­ing as the cen­tral hub bridg­ing Euro­pean and Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives. Beyond this ide­o­log­i­cal coor­di­na­tion, the alliance oper­ates through plat­forms like CPAC con­fer­ences in Budapest where lead­ers exchange tac­tics for insti­tu­tion­al cap­ture and media con­trol. This net­work rep­re­sents a depar­ture from Rea­gan-era con­ser­vatism toward nation­al­ist pro­tec­tion­ism, with many of Don­ald Trump’s appointees hav­ing attend­ed these conferences.

Media con­sol­i­da­tion forms a cor­ner­stone of this author­i­tar­i­an play­book. In Hun­gary, Orbán’s rul­ing Fidesz Par­ty con­trols 90 per­cent of media out­lets through sys­tem­at­ic takeovers facil­i­tat­ed by reg­u­la­to­ry weaponiza­tion. Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed how the gov­ern­ment fired over 1,600 jour­nal­ists from the pub­lic broad­cast­er, replac­ing them with loy­al­ists who receive explic­it instruc­tions on what terms to use and avoid. The 2018 cre­ation of the Cen­tral Euro­pean Press and Media Foun­da­tion con­sol­i­dat­ed approx­i­mate­ly 500 media out­lets under gov­ern­ment-friend­ly own­er­ship, with Orbán declar­ing this trans­fer a mat­ter of “nation­al strate­gic impor­tance” to bypass com­pe­ti­tion rules.

Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives increas­ing­ly embrace this mod­el as a blue­print for polit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion. Pres­i­dent Trump’s pres­sure cam­paigns against media com­pa­nies mir­ror Orbán’s sys­tem­at­ic cap­ture tac­tics through legal maneu­vers, finan­cial incen­tives, and reg­u­la­to­ry threats. CNN ana­lysts com­pared ABC’s sus­pen­sion of Jim­my Kim­mel after FCC threats to Hun­gary’s demo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing, not­ing how cor­po­rate capit­u­la­tion occurs indi­vid­u­al­ly rather than through coor­di­nat­ed resis­tance. Sim­i­lar­ly, both sys­tems tar­get civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions through sov­er­eign­ty pro­tec­tion mea­sures that inves­ti­gate for­eign-fund­ed NGOs and inde­pen­dent media.

Orbán’s pro­pa­gan­da machine secured pow­er by con­trol­ling news media and destroy­ing polit­i­cal oppo­nents for 15 years, though it now strug­gles against oppo­si­tion leader Peter Mag­yar despite sus­tained attacks by Fidesz-con­trolled out­lets. The Atlantic reveals that Hun­gary has become one of the poor­est EU nations as this sys­tem enriched a small cir­cle of oli­garchs while indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion and health­care declined. Steve Ban­non and Her­itage Foun­da­tion lead­ers nev­er­the­less praise Hun­gary as “an inspi­ra­tion” for Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives, with CPAC con­fer­ences becom­ing cru­cial plat­forms for solid­i­fy­ing these transna­tion­al bonds and coor­di­nat­ing mes­sag­ing strate­gies across continents.

Exter­nal References:

• I Can’t Do My Job as a Jour­nal­ist: The Sys­tem­at­ic Under­min­ing of Media Free­dom in Hun­gary — Human Rights Watch
• The rise of KESMA: How Orbán’s allies bought up Hun­gary’s media — Inter­na­tion­al Press Institute
• How to dis­man­tle democ­ra­cy: Lessons aspir­ing auto­crats may take from Hun­gary’s Orban — NPR

Dis­claimer: The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.