The killing of Népszabadság, Hungary’s biggest opposition paper

The conversations, of which many were conducted on the condition of anonimity, showed that Népszabadság, a paper long suffering from the universal newspaper crisis and from some of its own management’s wrong decisions, has become a victim of power games of well-connected businessmen and the apparently politically orchestrated redrawing of Hungary’s media landscape. “They built a wall around themselves, which made it impossible to change the internal structure,” said a former senior employee of the Swiss publishing company Ringier, which was a majority owner of Népszabadság for years. According to the employee, Ringier tried to modernize the paper but

Népszabadság’s senior editors felt, however, that the editorial team’s autonomy in certain decisions and even the presence of the Socialist Party as a minority owner were important guarantees that “the paper cannot be pushed around.”

Source: www.direkt36.hu