What The Hell America!

A decade ago, journalist András Pethő co-founded the nonprofit investigative site Direkt36. He’d just resigned from Origo, one of Hungary’s leading news sites, over political pressure on the newsroom.

Origo went on to become “a mouthpiece of Hungary’s authoritarian government” and “the website that shows how a free press can die.”

Direkt36, meanwhile, has cemented its reputation as a newsroom unafraid to investigate “abuses of power, corruption, negligence, and waste” over the past 10 years. It’s one of the handful of independent newsrooms holding power to account in Hungary even as prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government seeks to control the media.

It’s no small feat for a member-supported investigative site to survive a decade — especially in a country where about 10% of people pay for online news.

“We found a special position in the Hungarian media landscape,” Pethő said. “We’re not part of the news cycle. We focus all of our resources on investigative projects, reporting on stories that matter for the audience.”

One of their biggest successes came just last month. Mixing records and information from previous investigations and new hidden camera footage, “The Dynasty” documentary chronicles how Orbán’s family and friends have grown wildly wealthy as his political star has risen.

In its first month, the hour-long documentary has earned more than 3.5 million views on YouTube. (Hungary has a total population of around 9.6 million.) About 66% of Hungarians use YouTube, including 25% who say they get news on the platform.

Although the documentary is “old-fashioned” in that it’s narrated and somewhat restrained in tone, the “undercover” element seems to have resonated especially well with YouTube viewers, Pethő said. Some of the hidden camera footage brings viewers into a glitzy, privacy-obsessed club that’s part of the business empire built with government support.

This isn’t the first Direkt36 documentary — another investigating a scourge of hospital-acquired infections in Hungary was released in 2023 — but it is the newsroom’s most widely viewed yet. When I asked Pethő about what worked well, he first credited co-directors Mate Fuchs and Balint Biro.

He said it also helped that the political atmosphere in Hungary has changed in recent months.

“There’s much more interest in politics than there was a couple of years ago. The high inflation and other economic problems led to people becoming more open to stories about how members of the political elite profit from the government while the rest of the society has difficulties,” Pethő said. “In a bizarre way, the government propaganda also helped create some buzz around the film….These attacks were so ridiculous that it was clear for most people that this was a preemptive strike from the government.”

The documentary has boosted paid memberships — Direkt36’s chief source of revenue — from 3,000 to roughly 4,000, Pethő said. The site offers multiple tiers of membership, up to “insider” status at €180/year (about $195), but there is no minimum donation.

Making journalism where there’s very low trust in news

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism measures trust in news at just 23% in Hungary — tied for last among the 47 countries surveyed. That number reflects the state of media capture in the country: Pro-government outlets spread propaganda while independent media are routinely smeared as serving foreign interests.

Direkt36 has not been spared. The pro-government newspaper Magyar Nemzet accused Direkt36’s documentary of being part of a Ukrainian secret service operation to discredit Orbán. On its site, Direkt36 called the accusation a lie and pointed out that the project, “which started almost a year ago, was not influenced by anyone, either at home or abroad, and…was not funded by Ukraine.”

Direkt36 publicly lists its funders and has an ethics policy that does not allow members or donors to influence coverage.

“We try to build trust by being transparent about how we operate, but also by covering various political actors, not only the government,” Pethő said.

Other independent newsrooms in Hungary are making it work, too. Like Direkt36, the digital news site Telex was founded by the former staff of a news site (Index) that had been taken over by pro-government forces. In 2023, Telex became employee-owned — “a unique model” in Hungarian journalism, as the Reuters Institute notes. (Telex is the publishing partner of Direkt36.)

In another part of Hungary’s independent media scene, the primarily YouTube-based newsroom Partizán produces investigations, political news, and talk shows with a 70-person staff. Hungarian citizens are allowed to request that 1% of the amount they pay in personal income taxes be donated to a nonprofit; last year, more people chose Partizán to receive those donations than any other organization.

Advice for Americans from Hungary

In the first few months of the second Trump administration, the U.S. news industry has turned to journalists in other countries for advice on facing rising authoritarianism and press freedom restrictions.

Pethő repeatedly warned American journalists to “brace yourself for the worst.” That includes not assuming media owners will stand up to the administration.

Pethő’s previous employer Origo had been owned by the Hungarian subsidiary of the German telecommunication giant Deutsche Telekom. For many years, Pethő believed the powerful company was a relatively stable and safe choice to own a newsroom. But the telecom company — subject to governmental licenses, contracts, regulations, etc. — came under political pressure from Orbán government that started to affect news coverage.

“In 2009, I was invited to the office of the CEO of the telecom company because I won some awards and [they] wanted to recognize that,” Pethő recalled in a recent interview. “We were drinking champagne, and [the CEO] was telling me how important journalism and investigative journalism is. But it was the same company, and more or less the same management, that threw us under the bus four or five years later.”

“When I see what’s happening now with ABC, with CBS, and with other companies that are bending the knee, that reminds me of that situation in Hungary,” he added.

In an essay for our sister site Nieman Reports, Pethő emphasized the importance of relying on revenue sources outside advertisers and investors to fund hard-hitting journalism.

“If there has been one lesson during this journey, it is that nothing really matters other than the audience,” Pethő wrote. “The model of college-educated journalists writing news for a college-educated audience clearly doesn’t work as a business model (at least not for everyone). Neither does it fulfill the role journalism should play in a democracy.”

“Our only source of power is our audience,” he added. “The bigger and more diverse it is, the bigger our defense against any autocrat who wants to crush us.”