The International Press Institute (IPI) expressed disappointment over the decision of the Hungarian Parliament’s Justice Committee not to advance a bill that would have repealed criminal defamation and established safeguards against the abuse of civil defamation law.
Last month, IPI joined 29 other international press freedom and freedom of expression organisations in writing to the Committee’s chairman, Gyorgy Rubovsky, in support of the measure. The groups stated that the measure would promote “the right of Hungarian citizens to participate in public debate without fear of punishment”.
Read the article here.
The HCLU recaps the concerns about the Act CIV of 2010 on Freedom of the Press and on the Basic Rules Relating to Media Content
The Hungarian Parliament approved the draft bill on the so-called media-constitution, with the official title: Act CIV of 2010 on Freedom of the Press and on the Basic Rules Relating to Media Content, which was passed in November 2010 and entered into force on 1st January 2011.
You must be daring to quip about politicians in Hungary these days: journalists, bloggers and ordinary people have been brought to court for such deeds.
Physical attacks, often by the police, and abusive lawsuits against journalists are on the rise, data protection rules are abused to restrict freedom of information, unchallenged media ownership concentration threatens pluralism, national security used as a pretext for laws that restrict free speech: problems reported in the previous year in most EU countries remain unresolved and in some cases even worsened in 2022, according to the Liberties Media Freedom Report 2023 (Report) published today.