{"id":9620,"date":"2016-11-17T17:06:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T16:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/?p=4728"},"modified":"2016-11-17T17:06:09","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T16:06:09","slug":"ilyen-volt-a-nepszabadsag-halala-belulrol-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/ilyen-volt-a-nepszabadsag-halala-belulrol-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Ilyen volt a N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g hal\u00e1la bel\u00fclr\u0151l"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In collaboration with <\/em> \"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
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Andr\u00e1s Mur\u00e1nyi felt that something was strange. He had been the editor-in-chief of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g for more than a year and he never had any problem with reaching the CEO of the publishing company. On 7 October, however, he could not get hold of him.<\/p>\n

That evening the football teams of Hungary and Switzerland played a World Cup qualifier and Mur\u00e1nyi wanted to postpone the deadline for sending the paper to print. This would have made it possible to include the match result in the early edition as well, but the decision had to be approved by the CEO, Bal\u00e1zs R\u00f3nai. When R\u00f3nai failed to return Mur\u00e1nyi\u2019s repeated calls, the editor-in-chief sent the CEO a text message at 2:43 PM. He explained his request and the CEO finally responded with a short \u201cok.\u201d However, the approval for the postponement had not arrived so Mur\u00e1nyi sent another text message a few minutes after 4 PM. R\u00f3nai did not respond to that and in the end the paper did not get the permission for going to press later.<\/p>\n

Next morning, Mur\u00e1nyi understood what had happened. It was Saturday and he was at home when he got the news that the publishing company unexpectedly suspended the publication of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, Hungary\u2019s largest opposition newspaper. Soon he also learned that R\u00f3nai was unavailable because he disagreed with the decision and handed in his resignation the day before.<\/p>\n

Mediaworks, the publishing company, said that it suspended the 60-year-old paper because it had been generating losses for years. The paper\u2019s staff argued that the decision was made because of political reasons. This version was supported by the fact that a few weeks later Mediaworks was purchased by a company with links to a businessman close to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

Direkt36\u2019s investigation also found signs that politics played a significant role in the suspension. Over the last five weeks we spoke with nearly 30 people: former and current Mediaworks employees and others involved in the media industry and politics with knowledge about what happened with the paper. The conversations, of which many were conducted on the condition of anonimity, showed that N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, a paper long suffering from the universal newspaper crisis and from some of its own management\u2019s wrong decisions, has become a victim of power games of well-connected businessmen and the apparently politically orchestrated redrawing of Hungary\u2019s media landscape.<\/p>\n

Another sign of political involvement is that while Mediaworks\u2019 previous owner had kept on denying any reports of the company\u2019s upcoming takeover, N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g\u2019s political reporters had been hearing about this from their government sources for months. One source warned a journalist just a few days before the suspension that something significant would happen to the newspaper very soon. The staff, however, did not receive clear information on the suspension in advance.<\/p>\n

What made them especially angry is that Mediaworks deceived them. They were told that the whole company would move to new headquarters on the weekend of October 8 and 9. N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g\u2019s staff was asked to pack up their belongings the day before but then next morning their access to the internal emails was cut off and they received a letter informing them about the paper\u2019s immediate suspension. They were never allowed to enter the new headquarters and now it seems unlikely that N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g will ever be published again. Its online archive is unavailable, too. As one journalist put it, they \u201ctook our head and banged it into shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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We can do this work only if we have supporters. Become a supporting member now!<\/a><\/h3>\n
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The elegant Austrian<\/h2>\n

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In the final phase of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g\u2019s tragic story, Heinrich Pecina, a 66-year-old Austrian businessman with no previous involvement in the Hungarian media market, played an important role. Pecina has been conducting business in the Central European region for years. In Hungary, he was known for a long time only for his investments in the chemical and energy industries.<\/p>\n

In 2014, however, he became the owner of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g and other papers as a result of a major deal in the Hungarian media sector. That year Ringier and Axel Springer, two big Western European media companies, finalized their merger, which was approved by the Hungarian authorities on the condition that they have to sell some of their publications. This was when Pecina\u2019s company, Vienna Capital Partners, entered the scene and bought these papers, including N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of 2014, after the announcement of the merger deal, the Austrian businessman personally introduced himself to the staff of the papers he had just bought. Pecina, his hair and mustache always well groomed, stepped on the stage of Corvin Cinema and tried to convince his audience that he would be a responsible owner. Speaking in German with the help of an interpreter, he highlighted N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, saying that he knows what an important role it is playing in the Hungarian media landscape, according to a participant.<\/p>\n

The introduction, however, did not turn out to be very effecticve. \u201cHe was telling us with great empathy\u201d that it had been his longtime wish to have a media company in Hungary but<\/p>\n

\u201cit was clear that in two weeks he would have been able to say the opposite of this with the same emphaty,\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

said one participant. Another one said that one of Pecina\u2019s phoniest remarks was that he is a strategic investor because every morning he reads all the newspapers that are delivered to him. \u201cWe laughed at this quite a lot in the following days,\u201d recalled the journalist.<\/p>\n

By the time Pecina took over N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, the paper had already left behind its heyday. Print newspapers are in crisis almost everywhere in the world but some of the problems of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, formerly the official paper of the state party during the socialist era, were self-inflicted. Although since 1990 Western media companies owned the majority of its shares, the Socialist Party, the successor of the state party in the dictatorship, also remained among the shareholders. The paper\u2019s staff owned some shares, too, and during the time of prosperity, they managed to acquire such a high level of autonomy that later, when the difficulties started, made it hard for the majority owners to change the way the news organization operated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey built a wall around themselves, which made it impossible to change the internal structure,\u201d said a former senior employee of the Swiss publishing company Ringier, which was a majority owner of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g for years. According to the employee, Ringier tried to modernize the paper but<\/p>\n

the leaders of the editorial team blocked all these efforts while they were unable to generate any change from the inside.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g\u2019s senior editors felt, however, that the editorial team\u2019s autonomy in certain decisions and even the presence of the Socialist Party as a minority owner were important guarantees that \u201cthe paper cannot be pushed around.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result of the prolonged internal struggles, by the time Pecina appeared as the new owner in 2014 the news organization had been weakened significantly. By then it had also become clear that the Socialist Party, suffering from its own political and financial problems, would not be able to help strengthen the paper either. Pecina, however, promised just that. \u201cIt was always his mantra that he wanted to make Mediaworks one of the most important media companies of Hungary,\u201d said one former employee.<\/p>\n

At the beginning, he appeared to follow through those promises. The first major change at N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g was that Mediaworks\u2019 management hired a new editor-in-chief, Marcell Mur\u00e1nyi. He was coming from the most popular tabloid paper, Blikk, which made some staff members uneasy at N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, with its long history as a serious political newspaper.<\/p>\n

Mur\u00e1nyi, who looks strict with his shaved head but has a generally easygoing demeanour, made it clear that he did not plan to change the N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g\u2019s leftwing character. He also let the staff know, however, that he would like the paper to be better at digging up newsworthy stories.<\/p>\n

Some unpopular decisions were also made with the arrival of Mur\u00e1nyi. The budget was cut back substantially, the paper was reduced to 16 pages from 20, and, according to a senior staff member, everybody\u2019s salary was decreased by 3 to 8 percent. \u201cThe bigger salary you had the higher the cut was,\u201d said the journalist. He added that several people left because of the wage cuts.<\/p>\n

Despite the cuts, it appeared that there would be room for developments, too. Mur\u00e1nyi promoted some younger journalists and talks on developing the paper\u2019s presence on the web also started. In addition to the progressive steps, however, the staff had to face some uncomfortable effects of having a new owner.<\/p>\n

They learned that certain topics had to be treated specially in their news coverage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Forbidden stories<\/h2>\n

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The staff received suggestions from the management that the paper should not publish articles \u2013 apart from official statements or small news items \u2013 about subjects related to FHB Bank. The journalists, especially those on the business desk, were not really surprised at this because it was well known that Pecina was a shareholder at FHB. At first, they tried to resist and carried on writing about the subject but, according to a former journalist in the financial section, Mur\u00e1nyi soon made it clear that<\/p>\n

\u201eFHB was a taboo.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the meantime, another development made some staff members suspicious. At the beginning of 2015, Attila Mih\u00f3k, then-CEO of Mediaworks introduced J\u00falia Beer, a PR professional, to the management of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g and Vil\u00e1ggazdas\u00e1g (a business daily in the Mediaworks\u2019 portfolio). According to one of the persons present at the meeting, Mih\u00f3k said Beer was an advisor to the owner, and that she would occasionally meet the editors-in-chief to help \u201ebetter coordinate between the owner and the papers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Mih\u00f3k, known as a strong-willed manager, did not give voice to his dissatisfaction, his body language showed that he was unhappy with the arrival of Beer, according to one participant. (Mih\u00f3k refused to comment for the article.) Some journalists had similar feelings because they saw Beer\u2019s presence as a breach of the paper\u2019s autonomy. \u201cVCP [Vienna Capital Partners] just pushed the Trojan horse into the system, wanting to have a closer supervision over the content,\u201d said a former senior employee at Mediaworks.<\/p>\n

From then on, Beer, who was described by Mediaworks employees as having excellent communication skills, was a frequent guest in the newsroom. She regularly discussed ongoing stories with the editors-in-chief, and often made remarks on them. She was careful not to present these as direct intructions. As one former senior editor said, \u201cJuli is a professional communications expert, and she used the most sophisticated tools. She was remarkably good at packaging her messages.\u201d Instead of giving orders she just pointed out when an FHB press statement was about to be published and asked how the papers would write about it. This tactics is dangerous because her remarks could clearly lead to self-censorship, the former editor explained.<\/p>\n

Another former Mediaworks-employee had a similar experience with Beer, who always \u201csuggested\u201d or \u201cdoubted\u201d things, but never gave orders. \u201eWhy do you have to always write about these things?\u201d she would ask when a story about FHB Bank was brought up.<\/p>\n

Not only FHB was a taboo but practically everything in relation with its majority owner and CEO at the time, Zolt\u00e1n Sp\u00e9der. Sp\u00e9der had been close to government figures, and even became an important business partner of the state during the government-orchestrated integration of the country\u2019s savings banks. Pecina and Sp\u00e9der were not only linked through FHB but they had had a close business partnership since the \u201890s. \u201cTheir relationship is somewhere in between business partner and friendship, yet they never socialized privately,\u201d according to a source close to Sp\u00e9der. \u201cSp\u00e9der spends his days with work, anyway,\u201d the source added, \u201che\u2019s not very good at nurturing social relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

A telling example of Sp\u00e9der\u2019s special treatment, is when it was revealed that his name also appeared in the Panama Papers, showing that he had connections to offshore companies. When the news broke in May this year, one of the online editors was asked by his superiours not to write about it. But the call was unnecessary anyway: self-censorship worked already. \u201cI knew that writing a news story on it would surely cause troubles,\u201d the editor said. So, he decided to ignore the story.<\/p>\n

Some journalists also told Direkt36 about the special attention that S\u00e1ndor Cs\u00e1nyi, the leader of OTP, Hungary\u2019s biggest bank and therefore a rival of Sp\u00e9der, got at N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g. Reporters said that they received instructions suggesting that the publishing company would not mind to see articles painting a negative picture about Cs\u00e1nyi. A senior editor told Direkt36 that they could write anything about Cs\u00e1nyi but it was true that \u201cPecina wanted to know about anything published about the banker.\u201d<\/p>\n

The staff usually followed the guidelines on not to write in-depth stories on Sp\u00e9der and his interests. Except once, when one of the journalists made a professionally questionable decision on a story connected to the banker, and this triggered an internal conflict.<\/p>\n

This happened not long after Andr\u00e1s Mur\u00e1nyi\u2019s appointment as the new editor-in-chief in August 2015. Marcell Mur\u00e1nyi, the former editor-in-chief resigned after causing a lethal car accident. The two are brothers but Andr\u00e1s also had a long journalistic career behind him, of which he spent 14 years at N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e1s Mur\u00e1nyi had only been in charge for a month, when the conflict burst out. On 9 September 2015, the government announced to build a network to distribute European Union funds and to hire partners for that. The distribution partner would be chosen in a public procurement process, the government\u2019s statement said. When reading the statement, Bal\u00e1zs Horni\u00e1k, editor of the financial desk, remembered that S\u00e1ndor Cs\u00e1nyi had made a remark a few months before: he had suspected that in the public procurement, FHB might be the winner.<\/p>\n

Horni\u00e1k decided to write an article on the subject, not only citing the statement, but also mentioning Cs\u00e1nyi\u2019s remark and also explaining Sp\u00e9der\u2019s increasingly favourable position with the government. The article was ready by the evening. Horni\u00e1k did not even try to put it into the print version, knowing it would not survive the editing process. However, he had direct access to the website of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g. So he put the story there under the title \u201eCs\u00e1nyi: A friend of the government is favoured.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a few hours, Horni\u00e1k got an angry call from Andr\u00e1s Mur\u00e1nyi. The editor-in-chief asked whether Horni\u00e1k intended to \u201ecarry out a coup\u201d against him. He also asked why Horni\u00e1k had not briefed him about such a sensitive article before publication. They eventually agreed to discuss the matter the next day. Accordingly, Mur\u00e1nyi invited Horni\u00e1k to his office the next afternoon. He told him that even hot topics could be covered but it was important to be loyal to the owner, and the stories connected to his interests should not be pushed too far.<\/p>\n

Horni\u00e1k and Mur\u00e1nyi had not personally liked or respected each other before, but after the incident, their relationship got even cooler. Finally, Horni\u00e1k got an email on 30 September calling him to a meeting on the fifth floor to talk about his future at N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g. Mur\u00e1nyi, in the presence of an HR-employee, told him that he was going to be laid off. Officially, the cause was the unification of the political desk with the financial desk. The Cs\u00e1nyi article was not mentioned. Six other staff members were fired alongside Horni\u00e1k.<\/p>\n

Besides Sp\u00e9der\u2019s business interests being taboo, some journalists were instructed to be careful with stories on J\u00e1nos L\u00e1z\u00e1r, the head of the Prime Minister\u2019s office. L\u00e1z\u00e1r is admittedly a friend of Sp\u00e9der, and they also had a work relationship because of the cooperation between FHB and the government. However, in L\u00e1z\u00e1r\u2019s case, the instructions were even more vague than than in Sp\u00e9der\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were told to be careful with stories about him, for example when writing the headlines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I did not understand the instruction fully, and I was not sure what to tell my colleagues,\u201d an editor said. When asked, Mur\u00e1nyi only told him not to \u201cattack L\u00e1z\u00e1r unnecessarily.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mur\u00e1nyi and the editor had arguments over the matter several times. The source remembers Mur\u00e1nyi repeatedly saying that \u201cthere are very few free media outlets, and there is no place where the owner has no interests at all.\u201d Mur\u00e1nyi thought this was an acceptable compromise, \u201cbecause there were a lot of other things that we were free to write about.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about it, Mur\u00e1nyi told Direkt36 that the publisher indeed wanted to be told about the articles involving L\u00e1z\u00e1r, but this did not mean that N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g was not allowed to write stories uncomfortable for the minister. Once, he recalled, there was an article about politicians\u2019 fuel costs, and it turned out that L\u00e1z\u00e1r spent the most. The title of the article originally emphasized L\u00e1z\u00e1r being the top spender, but later it had to be changed, because the publisher asked to \u201ego easier.\u201d In the end, L\u00e1z\u00e1r was left out of the story\u2019s headline.<\/p>\n

It was also very important to be careful about information regarding Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s family, several journalists said. This was at least partly due to ethical reasons, because it was indeed not always clear what was to be considered in the public interest when it came to family members, they explained.<\/p>\n

But there was more to that. There was also a story circulating in the newsroom, according to which Orb\u00e1n once asked two things from Pecina. One was that the Austrian businessman should let him know if he ever wants to sell Mediaworks, the other was a request to leave Orb\u00e1n\u2019s family alone. Several journalists heard this from Andr\u00e1s Mur\u00e1nyi, who, according to two sources, learned about the request from a member of the management. (Orb\u00e1n and Pecina did not respond to questions.)<\/p>\n

N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, however, sometimes did write about Orb\u00e1n R\u00e1hel and her husband Istv\u00e1n Tiborcz and their business. In October 2015, for example, N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g published an article about the couple buying expensive paintings at an auction. After publication, Mur\u00e1nyi was called by one of Pecina\u2019s close advisors, telling him that \u201eVienna was outraged,\u201d which meant that Pecina was unhappy about the article. Mur\u00e1nyi told the advisor that it was justified to write the story because the painting purchase raised questions of how the couple could afford it. He also said that this article was just like when the British press publishes stories about Prince William and Kate Middleton. Hearing that, the advisor sounded relieved, and said, \u201egood, I\u2019ll tell this to Pecina.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The team<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There might have been a few topics that were forbidden but in the meantime there were efforts efforts at the paper to build a strong team to cover other important stories. In this, Mur\u00e1nyi, described by his colleages as brash but hard-working, relied mostly on younger staff members and new hirees.<\/p>\n

In one of first steps, he promoted P\u00e9ter Pet\u0151, who was only 31-year-old at the time, to be one of his three deputies and later put D\u00e1niel Bita of the same age in charge of the desk covering politics and business. In the fall of 2015, N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g hired Ferenc L\u00e1szl\u00f3 M., one of the country\u2019s leading political reporters. In the middle of 2016, J\u00f3zsef Spirk, another well-connected political journalist, and Roland Baksa, a prominent business reporter, joined the paper as well. All three were coming from online news sites.<\/p>\n

Mur\u00e1nyi changed the news operations, too. He instructed his editors that instead of filling the paper with daily news they should plan stories in advance and do follow-ups on them.<\/p>\n

During the last year, a team was put together to work on bigger projects. The group, led by Pet\u0151, held meetings almost every week \u2013 mostly on Thursdays \u2013 and in addition to Bita and the new hirees it included G\u00e1bor Varga G. and Anita K\u0151m\u0171ves, who had been with the paper for years.<\/p>\n

This team produced several of the stories with which N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g managed to dominate the news cycle in its final months. It was one of the Thursday meetings where Roland Baksa told his colleagues that Gy\u00f6rgy Matolcsy, the governor of the central bank, has a lover. \u201cWe discussed it whether there is a public interest in this and how we should approach this information,\u201d recalled Pet\u0151 the first steps of their investigation, which eventually revealed that Matolcsy\u2019s lover has held unusually high and well-paid positions at the bank.<\/p>\n

The team members made efforts to help each other, with Spirk checking his colleagues\u2019 tips with his well-placed sources, and Anita K\u0151m\u0171ves, a reporter on the foreign desk, looking up information in international databases and sharing with others her data journalism skills she had acquired while studying in the United States.<\/p>\n

Mur\u00e1nyi was happy with the changes. He was glad to see that the newsroom started buzzing, with journalists gathering spontaneously and sharing information with each other about their ongoing stories. What made the editor-in-chief especially proud was when other news organizations picked up N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g\u2019s stories. Every night, he switched on the TV to watch the news program of RTL, the most popular channel in Hungary, and was cheering loudly whenever they credited N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sinister signs<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This professional drive kept growing, but at the same time members of the editorial team became more and more concerned about news regarding a potential ownership change at Mediaworks. The staff had been suspicious about the intentions of Pecina from the very beginning, but in the spring of 2016 the speculation about a politically orchestrated takeover got stronger.<\/p>\n

The rumours reached the newsroom mainly through its journalists covering politics and media, who were briefed about the upcoming changes by their sources. For example, in the middle of May, Ferenc M. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 wanted to write an article about the expected reorganizations of media market when in a background conversation one of his sources told him that \u201cthis is funny, then you would also have to write about yourself.\u201d According to M. L\u00e1szl\u00f3, his source told him that the fate of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g is also uncertain because<\/p>\n

it was already decided that Mediaworks would be purchased sometime in 2016 by a buyer close to the governing Fidesz party.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The source did not reveal who the buyer would be, but around this time similar information reached Mur\u00e1nyi, too. The editor-in-chief received a call from a business player in April who said that according to their information a newly founded company called Opimus Press would be the buyer of Mediaworks.<\/p>\n

This turned out to be true, a couple of weeks after the suspension of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, on 25 October Pecina sold Mediaworks to Opimus Press, a company reportedly close to L\u0151rinc M\u00e9sz\u00e1ros, a friend of Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

Half a year ago, when rumors about Opimus\u2019 takeover started, Heinrich Pecina fully denied them to the staff. In June, the Austrian businessman personally rejected these allegations during one of his regular visits to the office of Mediaworks.<\/p>\n

By then, a few news reports \u2013 albeit still based only on information from unnamed sources \u2013 had been published about Mediaworks\u2019 potential takeover. One June morning Andr\u00e1s Mur\u00e1nyi even sent the links of these articles to the management, asking for explanation. A few hours later he received a phone call from J\u00falia Beer telling him to go to the sixth floor for an impromptu meeting with Pecina.<\/p>\n

People who know Pecina describe him as a very disciplined negotiating partner who never chit-chats and says only as much as it is in his interest. \u201cHe keeps himself under control. He does not only have a poker face but keeps also his gestures under control. He does not grimace, does not smooth his hair,\u201d Mur\u00e1nyi said and added that this was exactly how Pecina behaved during the June meeting at Mediaworks.<\/p>\n

The Austrian businessman greeted everyone, then asked them whether they spoke English, and after everyone nodded he continued in this language. He brushed the issue of news reports aside by saying that he did not want to comment on rumors. Then he tried to calm everyone by saying that the sale of the company is not on the agenda, but on the contrary, they are planning an expansion. \u201cWe bought something,\u201d he announced, and even though he did not say what, many quickly guessed that this was probably the Pannon Newspapers company, which owned four regional papers. (At the beginning of July the company officially submitted its purchase intention to the Competition Authority.)<\/p>\n

According to Mur\u00e1nyi, Pecina was so convincing at the meeting that nobody asked any questions. \u201cWhat he said fitted into the company communication of the past year that despite the rumors everybody should calm down,\u201d the editor-in-chief recalled.<\/p>\n

The news about the meeting and Pecina spread quickly amongst the staff of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, but it still did not calm things down. Developments in June raised further concerns among the journalists. For example, a new employee, Andrea Pint\u00e9r, appeared in the four-member legal unit of Mediaworks. Previously, the middle-aged woman held senior positions in the state sector, as director of the General Directorate of Public Procurement and Government Supply and legal and international director at the Hungarian National Recreation Foundation. Before joining the public sector in 2010, she had been working for international media companies, according to her LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n

Her background in the state sector and her activities in Mediaworks raised some eyebrows at N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g. In July, the lawyers and the management moved down to the floor of the newsroom and after that the journalists could also see how she held long and frequent talks with the directors of the company. Many of them assumed that her job was to do internal preparations for the firm\u2019s takeover.<\/p>\n

This suspicion appeared to be corroborated months later when Pint\u00e9r became one of the three directors of Mediaworks after Opimus Press purchased the company in October. The chairman of the board is G\u00e1bor Liszkay, who has long been a major figure in the media empire close to governing party Fidesz.<\/p>\n

Pint\u00e9r told Direkt36 that Pecina asked her to join Mediaworks because of her deep experience in international media law. She said that she had nothing to do with the closure of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g but she confirmed that she had known Liszkay for a long time.<\/p>\n

While Pint\u00e9r was settling into her job during the summer, N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g\u2019s journalists received more information about the upcoming takeover from their sources in the government. The topic started to dominate the water cooler conversations in the office. \u201dSeveral times I had seen getting together of the core group which had information about what was to be expected,\u201d said a journalist about political reporters.<\/p>\n

These rumors, however, did not include the possibility of the closure or suspension of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g.<\/p>\n

Many hoped that their survival would be secured even if Mediaworks were purchased by an owner close to the government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Andr\u00e1s Mur\u00e1nyi told several journalists that N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g would remain the current system\u2019s G\u00e9za Hofi, the legendary comedian who was allowed to make critical jokes about leaders under the socialist dictatorship.<\/p>\n

Mur\u00e1nyi was made hopeful by the news one his reporters got from Orb\u00e1n\u2019s circles. The prime minsiter\u2019s aides told the journalist that the renewed newspaper became \u201cmore modern and fair.\u201d Allegedly, Orb\u00e1n personally made a remark that the paper became more dynamic. In Mur\u00e1nyi\u2019s view, if the prime minister, who is an avid football fan, really said that then this should be interpreted as a favorable assessment because dynamism counts as a positive factor in football.<\/p>\n

The editor-in-chief was nevertheless prepared for a more negative version but this still did not count with the suspension of the newspaper. When one member of the management asked him in the middle of the summer what he considered as the worst-case scenario, he said this would be the political re-orientation of the newspaper, which would lead to the loss of both staff members and subscribers. \u201cReaders were sending letters about cancelling their subscriptions already because of the rumors about a takeover,\u201d Mur\u00e1nyi said.<\/p>\n

Despite the growing speculation, some major developments were carried out at N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, giving hope to the frustrated staff. After years of hesitation it was finally decided that the online version of the newspaper would be upgraded and the publisher even approved several new hirings. Some candidates turned down the offer during negotiations due to the uncertain situation of Mediaworks, but the company still managed to hire several prominent journalists with serious online experience. The new website was also finished and its activation was scheduled for the end of 2016.<\/p>\n

The enthusiasm for investigative reporting also continued to grow and as part of these efforts, the leading editors were even willing to take on the management. For example, this August the management tried to prevent the publication of an article about the spendings of the Budapest 2024 company, which is responsible for the Hungarian application for the Olympic games. Bita and Pet\u0151 worked together on this article as they had been pursuing the story for some time. Previously, they broke stories by obtaining the feasibility study of a potential Olympics in Budapest.<\/p>\n

The conflict with the management started after Pet\u0151 had finally received the requested information as a result of long correspondence with Budapest 2024. Mur\u00e1nyi then signaled to Pet\u0151 that the even though he also wants to publish the story the management had concerns about it. CEO Bal\u00e1zs R\u00f3nai personally talked about this with Pet\u0151, and according to sources familiar with the conversation, R\u00f3nai said that the article would cause great damage to the publisher, because they would lose significant amount of advertisement money during the upcoming Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro. Pet\u0151 told him that if the article could not be published he and Bita would both resign.<\/p>\n

After the tense discussion Pet\u0151 rushed to Mur\u00e1nyi. The editor-in-chief told his deputy that if he and Bita resigned, then he would also leave. The dispute with the management continued the same day, at another meeting with the participation of members of the management and Mur\u00e1nyi and Pet\u0151. The conflict was resolved here after they reached an agreement that the article would not be published during the Olympics but only afterwards. The story finally appeared on 2 September, on the front page of the newspaper.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The endgame<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

While the editors were facing increasing pressure, the general mood in the newsroom was deteriorating due to the growing speculation about the future of Mediaworks. \u201cBy the end of the summer the staff became very demoralized,\u201d one of the journalists said. She recalled that around this time one of her collaegues was contacted by another company with an job offer saying that<\/p>\n

\u201cyour company would die anyway, come work rather with us.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

News reaching Mur\u00e1nyi were also becoming worse. At the end of August, R\u00f3nai told him that the staff should find a buyer for N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g. \u201cI asked him, are we in such deep shit? R\u00f3nai replied that it was not sure whether there would be a place for N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g in the new structure,\u201d Mur\u00e1nyi recalled. Later he contacted \u201ctwo big investors\u201d to buy the newspaper, but neither of them were interested. They said that they could not believe that N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g could really be shut down. They also said that they are afraid of the government and therefore they do not want to invest in the newspaper.<\/p>\n

In September, the editor-in-chief received more concrete information about the fate of the newspaper. A source he described as close to the government told him that Magyar Id\u0151k, a newspaper openly symphatizing with the government, was to move in to the new headquarters of Mediaworks, and \u201cyou guys will be wiped out.\u201d Mur\u00e1nyi got even more concerned when later R\u00f3nai told him that he had heard that G\u00e1bor Liszkay, the publisher of Magyar Id\u0151k, would become the new CEO of Mediaworks.<\/p>\n

Liszkay \u2013 who then indeed took over the management of Mediaworks after its October sale \u2013 has played a major role in the setup and leadership of the Fidesz-leaning media in the past twenty years. For a long time he was the editor-in-chief of Magyar Nemzet, a rightwing newspaper, but after the paper\u2019s owner, Lajos Simicska had a falling out with Viktor Orb\u00e1n, he left Simicska and started to work on building a new media empire supporting Fidesz.<\/p>\n

According to a source close to the government, who has been in contact with several people involved in the reorganization of the media landscape, Liszkay also played a substantial role in the takeover of Mediaworks.<\/p>\n

According to the source, the process was accelerated by the fall of Zolt\u00e1n Sp\u00e9der, the manager of FHB Bank and the former ally of the government. Earlier this year, criminal investigations were launched in cases linked to the banker, the government-friendly media ran a smear campaign against him, and the parliament approved legislation hurting his businesses. The motivation behind these apparently orchestrated attacks is still not clear, but with Sp\u00e9der\u2019s weakening it became obvious that whatever influence he had over Mediaworks in the past, he would not be able to enforce it anymore.<\/p>\n

The preparations for the takeover went quickly, and the Competition Authority approved the deal of Mediaworks\u2019 purchasing Pannon Lapok T\u00e1rsas\u00e1ga unusually fast, only a month after it had been submitted. Liszkay, however, did not really know what to do with N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, according to the source close to the government and familiar with the decisions regarding Mediaworks\u2019 takeover.<\/p>\n

According to this source, Liszkay was considering three scenarios. One of them was to keep N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g and to transform it into a \u201cleftwing paper under control.\u201d The problem with this solution was that this would have generated serious internal conflicts and Mediaworks still should have covered the costs of the paper. The second scenario was to sell N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g to a leftwing investor, but someone who can still be controlled by the government. The weakness of this version was that Mediaworks would not have got a good price for the paper and Liszkay did not want to enter a deal like that.<\/p>\n

The third option was to shut down the paper. According to the source, this was chosen in the final days because<\/p>\n

even a week before the suspension it was not clear which scenario they would pick.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Liszkay did not respond to questions sent to him through Mediaworks.)<\/p>\n

The way Pecina told his plans with N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g to Bal\u00e1zs R\u00f3nai, the CEO of Mediaworks, also suggests that it was an abrupt decision. During the two days before the suspension, Pecina and R\u00f3nai met at least twice, according to people close to them. On Thursday, 6 October, the two had dinner in Gresham Palace, a luxury hotel in Budapest. The following day they had a more formal meeting in the office of a law firm working for Mediaworks.<\/p>\n

R\u00f3nai had been expecting for months that something would happen to N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g and therefore he had prepared a letter of resignation. During his second talk with Pecina, it became clear that the Austrian businessman had made up his mind about a plan for N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g that R\u00f3nai could not agree with. R\u00f3nai told Pecina that he was leaving the company. Even at that meeting, Pecina did not reveal all the details of his decision. He did not tell R\u00f3nai that the suspension would take place the very next day. (R\u00f3nai did not comment on the questions sent to him.)<\/p>\n

In the meantime, N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g\u2019s staff had no idea about these developments. All of them were getting ready for moving to the new headquarters. Following the management\u2019s instructions, they packed all of their belongings to boxes and put stickers on them with their ID number.<\/p>\n

Mur\u00e1nyi was in constant contact with the assistants who handled the logistics of the moving. He was still upset by not getting approval for postponing the printing deadline but otherwise it appeared to be a usual working day for the staff.<\/p>\n

Pet\u0151, who was in charge of putting together next day\u2019s paper, Bita and a few more political reporters went to have one final lunch at one of their favorite places in the area, Komp\u00f3t Bisztr\u00f3. Over their meals they were talking about what restaurants they would find in the new neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Pet\u0151 and Bita, who celebrated his birthday that Friday, were not in a hurry because for them as editors the work always got more intensive after 4 or 5 PM, when the stories from the reporters and the different desks started to arrive. Normally, by 9-10 PM the newsroom became silent but that day a few journalists decided to stay after they were done with their work. They gathered around the desk of the online section and opened a few bottles of wine. They were chatting, with the football match between Hungary and Switzerland in the background, while Pet\u0151 and some of his colleagues were putting the finishing touches on next day\u2019s paper.<\/p>\n

The kitchen had been emptied days ago because of the moving so the journalists drank the wine, which was not of very good quality anyhow, from plastic cups. Even though the newsroom staff had been frustrated by the growing speculation about the future of the publishing company, that evening the conversation was about other matters. They discussed personal stories and recalled that at the time of their last moving they organized such a big a party that they were talking about it even days later.<\/p>\n

This time there was no such party, and the drinking was over by 10:30. Pet\u0151 left a little later and travelled to Hatvan, his hometown. His father and brother were in Budapest to see the World Cup qualifier and they picked him up after the match near the stadium. Next morning, Pet\u0151 received a call from the sports editor, Iv\u00e1n Hegyi, who said that there was a problem. Pet\u0151\u2019s first thought was that he must have made a mistake with the article about the match. But then Hegyi told him that he was calling because the paper had been suspended.<\/p>\n

Pet\u0151 immediately decided to go back to Budapest. He took a train and when he was not on the phone, he was thinking about what could have happened. In his deep frustration he even started to cry. N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g was his first workplace, he started working there as an intern. \u201cThis was my life,\u201d he said and mentioned that he kept a log on the articles he wrote. He had more than one thousand, but on the 8th of October, this list has come to an end, too.<\/p>\n

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