Rodney Benson

And then he has exercised that kind of indirect control through his business allies.

They bought up an estimated 80% of all the major commercial media in the country.

And part of the leverage he has there is they're financially vulnerable.

They've benefited from state-supported loans.

They're heavily relying on government funds.

advertising.

A lot of these media outlets, about 500 outlets, including almost all the local newspapers, were gathered together in a large foundation managed by a close ally of Orban, 500 news outlets.

They have squeezed out basically all but a handful of independent or critical voices.

And they've, similar to what we're

saying about the Trump administration.

They've harassed those independent media through the regulatory process.

And so...

There are a handful of independent media left there, but every chance they get, they try to buy up more.

And there was, for instance, just very recently, there was the largest newspaper in Hungary and has also one of the largest online presence, was bought up by an Orban ally.

And the timing there is interesting because there is an election coming up in Hungary where it looks like Orban may have some real competition.

One avenue is to think about different kinds of ownership structures, right?

And we see that even in the U.S.

So if you see, like, which are the outlets that are still standing up that are not capitulating?

They have a kind of different ownership structure, like the New York Times with the family control of a stock market traded company so they can resist those profit pressures if they need to, or the Guardian owned by a trust, the Associated Press, a not-for-profit cooperative.

In Europe, you have that.