Pressures on Minority Media in Hybrid Regimes: A Case Study of Hungarian-Language Media in Serbia

Abstract

This paper analyses political pressure on Hungarian-language media in Vojvodina as a case study of media capture within a hybrid regime in Serbia. Drawing on the theoretical framework of hybrid regimes (Levitsky & Way, 2010) and the concept of media capture (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2013), it argues that minority media are subject to a specific, doubly legitimised form of political control – both through the mechanisms of the hybrid regime at the state level and through the rhetoric of minority identity defence at the level of the community. Political loyalty to the ruling minority party is presented as defence of the community itself, whereby a journalist’s critical distance is reinterpreted as a threat to national identity. The case study traces the role of the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (AVH) and the National Council of the Hungarian National Minority in controlling the media space, as well as the transnational financial influence exerted by Hungary under the rule of Viktor Orbán. It then examines the intercultural dimension of the problem: a captured minority medium loses its capacity to serve as a space for negotiating identities within the community and in relation to mainstream society, while internal pluralism – gender-based, generational, political – is suppressed in favour of a homogenised image of the community. The concluding section examines, through the example of the Szabad Magyar Szó portal, founded following the politically motivated dismissal of the editor of the daily Magyar Szó, whether editorial independence can be established outside the boundaries of the captured system or only through renewed institutions.