A State Propaganda Leader Tackles Fake News Beyond His Reach

(Bloomberg) -- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is used to being on the defensive over restrictions on the rule of law and the media. In the online world where the biggest tech firms rule, though, his government says it's all for openness.

Hungary wants “strong guarantees for personal rights and freedom of expression in the online arena,” Justice Minister Judit Varga said in an interview in Budapest on Tuesday.

She's formed a working group to explore areas where companies such as Facebook Inc. and Alphabet's Inc.'s Google should face more stringent regulation, including reining in the spread of fake news.

Hungary is eager to be seen as a proponent of democratic norms. Orban's administration is being investigated by the European Union for allegedly undermining the rule of law; media plurality is a particular problem. A propaganda empire of almost 500 pro-government outlets has led to information control that's “unprecedented” for an EU member, with a “dramatic decline” in press freedom, the Reporters Without Borders group said in December.

Any new online rules in Hungary are likely to be formulated with other EU members and not in isolation. Mindful of the context, the government in Budapest is keen to avoid the impression that it wants to muzzle online activity -- one of the few forums where Hungary's opposition successfully spread its message to voters.

“This is not about censorship,” said Varga, the 39-year-old former diplomat Orban appointed to his cabinet last year. “I'd like to probe how, when they censor or when they delete pages or when they decide what news stream to put in front of me, based on what algorithm they do that,” she said, “and how transparent that is.”

An urge to regulate news on social platforms is common in many parts of the world, especially among populist leaders from U.S. President Donald Trump to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who decry a perceived liberal bias.

Hungary is unlikely to craft its own legislation on big tech and will instead try to channel efforts into an EU initiative. That plan would leverage the power of the bloc's market of 450 million consumers to set global standards that companies around the world would be forced to follow.

The same goes for taxing such companies, for now, Varga said: Hungary is unlikely to follow some EU peers in preemptively imposing a digital levy before an OECD-led effort this year to formulate a uniform approach.

--With assistance from Aoife White.

To contact the reporter on this story: Zoltan Simon in Budapest at zsimon@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net, Paul Sillitoe

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