The Party Colonisation of the Media

Media scholars looking into the relationship between political and media systems in the former communist countries have mainly worked on the assumption that parties seek control over the media in order to suppress critical voices and to gain favourable coverage so that they can influence voting behaviour, but have barely explored political actors’ other possible motivations. Meanwhile, political scientists studying the region’s countries have often focused on parties’ relationship to the state and the resources that they extracted from state institutions such as ministries and municipalities but largely ignored the relationship between parties and the media. This article, written as part of the project Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, attempts to link these two traditions of research. Introducing the concept of the party colonisation of the media, it looks into what benefits other than suppressing criticism and gaining favourable coverage parties may gain from controlling the media. It uses the example of Hungary to illustrate how the party colonisation of the media works. It also intends to assess how different patterns of media colonisation affect media freedom.