Index.hu

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Index.hu
logo
description News portal
language Hungarian, English
publishing company Magyar Fejlődésért Alapítvány
First edition May 17, 1999
Editor-in-chief Szabolcs Dull (until July 22, 2020)
Web link index.hu
ISSN (online) 1585-3241

Index.hu (often just Index ) is a Hungarian news portal based in Budapest . It was founded in 1999 and is the most visited news website in Hungary with around 1.5 million hits per day (as of June 2018).

history

Origin and precursors

Index emerged from the news portal Internettó , which was the first Hungarian news portal on the World Wide Web in 1995 and remained the most widely used news website in Hungary for several years. Due to “conceptual differences” with the owner IDG Hungary , the majority of the editors left the portal in May 1999 and founded Index, whose first editor-in-chief was András Nyírő. In 2001, Index was the second most visited website in Hungary, behind the news portal Origo, and had a market share of 25 percent in the country for Internet advertising .

Change of ownership in the 2000s and 2010s

Despite the high number of readers, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2001/02, before the conglomerate Wallis Rt. , Chaired by Gordon Bajnai, acquired 31 percent of the shares in March 2002 and became the sole owner in the following years. In 2005 the businessman Kristóf Nobilis bought all shares in Index.hu with his company Sydinvest Kft . A year later, OTP Bank manager Zoltán Spéder, who was close to the then opposition party Fidesz , acquired some shares after speculating that he was behind the takeover by Nobilis.

After Fidesz won the parliamentary elections in 2010 , the editorial team feared political pressure on their work. The long-time editor-in-chief Péter Uj resigned in 2011 and later justified this with the fact that he had to fire an editor because of an article critical of the government. A group of editors around Uj founded the 444.hu portal in 2013 . After a large part of the editorial team had left Index again, the portal and its new employees focused more on investigative journalism .

On July 20, 2017, the Magyar Fejlődésért Alapítvány Foundation (MFA, German Foundation for Hungarian Development ) acquired the news portal, whereupon the entire management stepped down. Behind the takeover was the entrepreneur Lajos Simicska , a former supporter of Viktor Orbán who had broken openly with him two years earlier. He had already acquired an option to purchase Index in 2014 with his company Pro-Ráta Kft . In order to maintain the portal's independence, media lawyer and long-time in-house lawyer László Bodolai was appointed as the foundation's curator .

Index "in danger"

In September 2018, the Index editors summed up in an open letter that the editorial and personal independence had been preserved by the foundation so far. However, she saw increasing outside pressure in a change of ownership at the company that managed Index's advertising business and IT. The editorial team therefore published a three-stage “independence barometer” on a separate website, which shows how independent the reporting currently is in their own opinion.

On June 21, 2020 the editor-in-chief Szabolcs Dull set the barometer to “in danger” for the first time, which caused an international media response. As an immediate reason for this, 444.hu cited plans to close down the index editorial team and distribute most of it to external companies. Previously, in March 2020, the businessman Miklós Vaszily, who is known for his work for the media companies of Lőrinc Mészáros , took over 50 percent of the shares in Indamedia Sales Kft. , Which is responsible for Index's advertising business.

One month later, on July 22, 2020, Dull was fired by Bodolai for having passed internal documents on to other media. According to an article by Deutsche Welle, however , the dismissal was "presumably under pretexts". The editors saw the process as "an open attempt to put pressure on Index.hu" and demanded that Dull be reinstated in his post. Finally, on July 24, 2020, over 80 journalists and the entire editorial board resigned from their posts. On the same day, several thousand people protested for press freedom in Budapest .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Elisabeth Katalin Grabow: Index.hu im Wandel. Years of struggle for journalistic independence. Budapester Zeitung , July 4, 2020, accessed on July 27, 2020.
  2. ↑ Attila Szuhi: A legnézettebb hazai weboldalak és hírportálok látogatottsági rangsora 2018. ite.hu, October 17, 2018, accessed on July 27, 2020.
  3. ↑ Balázs Mellár: Index.hu Rt. In: Vezetéstudomány . tape 32 , no. 9 , 2001, p. 40-48 ( uni-corvinus.hu [PDF]).
  4. ↑ Internet in a transition economy: Hungary Case Study. International Telecommunications Union, April 2001, accessed on July 27, 2020, p. 20 (PDF, 1.2 MB).
  5. ↑ Pál Dániel Rényi: Orbán és Schmidt Mária benyelte volna az Indexet, Simicskának lépnie kellett. 444.hu, April 27, 2017, accessed on August 3, 2020.
  6. ↑ Simicska érintésével keretzt "alapítványi" tulajdonba az index. 444.hu, April 20, 2017, accessed August 3, 2020.
  7. ↑ Attila Tóth-Szenesi: Index Remains Unchanged. Index.hu, September 18, 2018, accessed on August 3, 2020.
  8. ↑ Alasdair Sandford: Hungary's main online news site Index.hu says independence 'in danger'. Euronews, June 22, 2020, accessed August 3, 2020.
  9. ↑ Keno Verseck: Media in Hungary: Is the flagship of the independent press in danger? Deutsche Welle, June 24, 2020, accessed on August 3, 2020.
  10. ^ Government- critical editor-in-chief dismissed. Deutsche Welle, July 23, 2020, accessed on August 3, 2020.
  11. ^ Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members resign. Index.hu, July 24, 2020, accessed on August 3, 2020.
  12. ^ Matthew Holroyd: Index: More than 80 journalists resign from Hungarian news site after editor sacked. Euronews, July 25, 2020, accessed August 3, 2020.