The ruling party’s daily Magyar Nemzet lost the most press lawsuits last year

As always since 2018, this year we asked the Metropolitan Court of Budapest which media organizations lost the most press correction and privacy lawsuits last year. According to the data from the court, the official government daily paper Magyar Nemzet was the negative leader with 24 lost lawsuits. Government aligned publisher Mediaworks also lost 24 times, while Átlátszó, Magyar Hang and RTL won all of their cases.

According to data from the Metropolitan Court of Budapest, a total of 76 lawsuits involved various government-aligned media outlets in 2024, who were sued to issue corrections by the subject of their false reporting. Of the 76 cases, 67 were lost: 51 in full and 16 in part.

For example, the pro-Fidesz tabloid Origo was forced to publish the statment: „we falsely claimed that Zoltán Varga is the sole shareholder of Central Médiacsoport Zrt. We falsely claimed that “the title deeds to his luxury villa reveal that he has built an intricate web of companies, which he has hidden behind a P.O. box in the notorious offshore paradise of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands through tricky transfers.”

Origo lost a total of 13 failed lawsuits (12 of which fully and 1 partially), and Ripost, a tabloid of similar nature lost 13 (9 fully, 4 partially). However this year, the the record holder was Magyar Nemzet with 24 convictions.

Independent media outlets were sued in 26 press cases last year by people or organizations who were subjects of their reporting. The media outlets won 19 out of 26, or 73% of cases.

Átlátszó, Magyar Hang and RTL was among media outlets that were sued, but won all the press cases against them.

Last year, Átlátszó was sued 5 times, while Magyar Hang and the TV station RTL was sued twice, all lawsuits being unsuccessful. Weekly magazine and news portal HVG was sued 6 times, and in 3 cases, the court partially found in favor of the plaintiff. News portal 24.hu was fully ruled against by the court in 2 out of 6 lawsuits. News portals 444.hu partially lost 1 out of 3, Telex lost 1 out of 2 lawsuits.

In addition to the press correction cases, the Metropolitan Court also sent a table of privacy lawsuits (i.e. lawsuits against the anauthorized use of one’s photos, videos, or voice). However, there were only 2 such cases: one against HVG and one against TV2, so these are shown in the graph combined with the press lawsuit data. HVG won the case, while TV2 lost.

We also requested data on the various press lawsuits related to violations of personality rights. According to the table provided by the Metropolitan Court, 33 personality rights cases were lost by the government media last year, either in whole or in part.

As in 2023, Mediaworks, which includes regional and other newspapers, is the negative record holder in 2024.

The media group was sued for violating personality rights (i.e. for defamation) 26 times and lost in 24 of those cases.

In 20 of these the court ruled fully in favor of the plaintiff.

HírTv and TV2 lost in all 4 of the 4-4 personality lawsuits brought against them, as did the state-owned media MTVA in the 1 action brought against them.

The independent media were judged in 2 such cases last year: 444 won and 24.hu lost partially.

Overall, the data from the Metropolitan Court shows that pro-government media outlets are being sued for false claims, image and personality rights violations much more often than independent media outlets, and they lose most of the cases. In total, they lost 67 out of 76 of press correction lawsuits, which is a 88% loss rate. This rate goes as high as 94% when we look at personality rights infringement cases where they lost 33 of 35 cases.

The trend is not a recent one. At the beginning of 2018, we first published data on the number of press correction cases lost by various media outlets (both government and independent), based on data requested from the Metropolitan Court. Since then, we have continued to monitor and publish the number of lost press lawsuits: in 2017, 53 press correction lawsuits were lost by the government’s popular media, 109 in 2018, 73 in 2019, 57 in 2020 and 54 in 2021.  In 2022, 29 press correction cases were lost by the pro-government press, and in 2023, 22 were lost.