Media should heed Hungary's cautionary tale

Hungary’s media experience offers a cautionary lesson for Kenya’s publicly funded broadcasters ahead of the 2027 elections. [File Courtesy]

Council of Governors Chairman Ahmed Abdullahi is the kind of person who makes you pay attention even when he’s merely teasing you.

Last Saturday, he told me point-blank that he and I were politically on opposite sides. Abdullahi said that by virtue of being a columnist for The Saturday Standard, I had been conscripted into the ‘one-term’ camp.

The Wajir governor was referring to the paper’s string of stinging headlines widely seen to be anti-establishment.

But beneath Abdullahi’s jest lies the reality that perceptions about media firms, and where they supposedly stand politically, will be more entrenched as we head to the 2027 polls. Publicly funded media houses, in particular, will be under intense pressure to serve up ‘balanced’ content. It brings to mind what happened in Hungary recently, where perceptions of the media’s political leanings became part of a bigger national conversation. The decision to suspend news broadcasts on the country’s publicly funded media set a new precedent.

Prime Minister Péter Magyar says M-1 TV and Kossuth Radio had become spin masters. Indeed, on July 7, the stations’ editors made a rare on-air confession that they had betrayed the very principles they were meant to uphold. “Public media shouldn’t lie. We apologise because we did this anyway,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, a recent parliamentary probe delivered a damning verdict on France’s public broadcaster, branding it a bloated bureaucracy out of touch with the taxpayers. Interestingly, tremors from Magyar’s axe have spread far beyond Europe.

In Africa, broadcasters are watching with bated breath. Some scholars say the ‘reforms’ in Hungary could replace one form of political influence with an even more entrenched one. However, it underlines the ‘Saul-to-Paul moment’ facing publicly funded media globally. For them, survival will depend on how they embrace editorial independence.

Those that succeed won’t be seen as State broadcasters but as ‘value for money’ public service institutions accountable to the people. The BBC in the UK, NHK in Japan, Germany’s ARD and CBC of Canada are among the few trustworthy publicly funded broadcasters. Their distinguishing feature, however, isn’t merely public funding but the solid safeguards put in place to prevent partisan influence.

Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) TV ranks eighth nationally in viewership despite its wide terrestrial coverage and State funding. The rating falls further at prime-time when viewers switch to private stations like KTN, NTV and Citizen.

The situation is worse for broadcasters in Tanzania, South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, DR Congo and even Rwanda, where trust is frail.

The lesson is that public funding or State ownership doesn’t automatically earn public trust and credibility.

In the region, publicly funded media come alive only when there are football matches. They secure broadcast rights to such games but can’t command the same audience for their regular programming.

For KBC, the biggest irony is that it’s legally mandated to be a public service broadcaster but functions like a State or political party outlet.

In 2007, it was criticised for broadcasting disputed presidential results after which Mwai Kibaki was hurriedly sworn in, leading to 1,200 post-election deaths.

Then came Uhuru Kenyatta’s time. In 2017, a ‘Mr Fix-it’ from KBC rallied top editors for a State House meeting on the eve of the Opposition’s mock swearing-in. Then private stations were switched off air. As that happened, KBC cheered on. The damage to its credibility was catastrophic.

President William Ruto’s administration, however, has adopted a style in which overt interference is less evident. But certainly, what KBC and its peers aren’t telling us is why they’re reluctant to compete head-to-head with private media on quality programming.

Hungary’s case is a cautionary tale that all taxpayer-funded broadcasters must heed.

The writer is a communications practitioner