8 March 2013
The Financial Times (FT) continued its anti-Hungarian agenda this week with a well-timed assault on the country’s Prime Minister just as he was about to meet Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel. In an ill tempered and hectoring editorial, the newspaper called for the EU to withdraw Hungary’s voting rights in retaliation for Hungary continuing to defy Brussels regarding the new Hungarian constitution. For the FT, the Hungarian government is demonstrating non-European values.
The editorial, however, reeks of hypocrisy. Where was the FT in 2006, when the previous Socialist-Liberal Hungarian government, represented by its Prime Minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány, admitted to lying day and night to the people, stealing an election and covering it up. Perhaps I could ask the FT if this was not also an assault on European values and worthy of comment? Why was the FT silent in 2006? Could it be that some people’s European values are better than others in the eyes of the FT?
Hungary represents an intellectual problem for the FT and particularly its reporters in Budapest. The fact that the current ruling party won a thumping majority at the last election was – in the eyes of the FT – not good for democracy. Populist government is not in Europe’s interest. Far from being populist, the Fidesz government is popular. It is popular still because it puts its people first and does not adhere to the orthodoxy of Brussels. Its economic policy is unorthodox in the sense that it lies outside EU orthodoxy on economic policy but is that so bad? Given the wreck that is the Eurozone, is it totally unreasonable to try another way? Is the FT really trying to argue that only Brussels and the international banking system have the answer to macroeconomic policy in Hungary?
I would suggest that a major part of the FT’s angst over Hungary lies in the over-reliance of imbalanced reporting from Budapest coupled with poor quality analysis. This week’s editorial on Hungary was partly based on an accompanying report from Budapest by the FT’s own journalists and which is indicative of the limited reporting and poor analysis cited above. For example, the sources cited in the report are solidly anti-Fidesz. The primary source quoted on the constitutional issue, an academic from Princeton University, is regularly cited and a well-known critic of the new constitution. His opinion is accepted with no alternative consideration given. Yet we know that an interview cited in a local Budapest newspaper of an eminent German constitutional lawyer suggested that the document was actually solid. Of this the FT gave not a mention. Was it really not possible to give a view from the government? If the answer is no, the FT reporters in Budapest either cannot access government speakers or deliberately choose to ignore them. This is worrying either way.
Another major source of the reporting in their article was Gordon Bajnai – described as ‘Hungary’s technocrat Prime Minister in 2009-2010 after the collapse of a discredited socialist government’. A very nice sleight of hand by the FT reporters but let us consider the implications of the statement. In fact, Gordon Bajnai was a leading minister in this ‘discredited government’ and therefore by definition, was a discredited minister. Indeed, in government, he participated in the 2006 assault on European values, participating in the telling of lies day and night. Yes, he was a technocratic prime minister but he was also an unelected prime minister with tainted anti-democratic credentials. Given that he was also booted out of office, we can safely say that he was also a failure and a looser. In short, the FT relies for its impression of Hungary with a politician with no credibility whatsoever. Yet this is not a one off failure of analysis and poor journalism. This is not the first time that the analysis and opinion of the FT team leaves much to be desired. Read carefully their analysis over the past two years and make up your own mind.
A major strength for any journalistic organisation is to have reporters who offer a deep insight into the society into which they have become embedded. Perhaps I am mistaken but the FT’s perspective of Hungary is imbalanced and as a result, its coverage is less commentary and analysis and more partisan special pleading. This is not good for the FT’s readers, investors or the Hungarian people.