The just released report by Freedom House on media freedom concerning Hungary is “utterly groundless” and “extremely biased”, Zoltan Kovacs, the state secretary in charge of government communications, told MTI in a statement on Tuesday.

In its global media freedom report for 2011 the Washington-based independent NGO downgraded Hungary to the "partly free" category. The report described the case of Hungary extremely unusual in the index’s history, being a country with a long-standing free status which then performs a 13-point decline within two years.

Freedom House said the reason for Hungary's downgrade was the concerted efforts by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s conservative government to seize control over the legal and regulatory framework for media. In the report FH said that Hungary, whose score deteriorated sharply in 2010, was downgraded "to reflect the ongoing erosion of press freedom under Prime Minister Viktor Orban."

"This was seen in the establishment of the National Agency for Data Protection, which will restrict access to information; evidence of a politically motivated licensing procedure that resulted in a critical radio station losing its frequencies; increased reports of censorship and self-censorship, especially at the public broadcasters; and worsening economic conditions for independent media entrepreneurship," it said.

Kovacs in his statement said that the "US-based organisation has failed to produce a report free of partisan intent and narrow political judgement – and formulates its opinion in the form of a self-fulfilling hypocritical prophecy."

He said that the "document in its present form is an accompaniment to a consistent campaign in recent months, the sole intent of which has been to discredit the Hungarian government and is a perfect illustration of the use of double standards."

"Apart from examples drawn from a hysterical and hypocritical campaign against Hungary the argumentation of the Freedom House report is missing real evidence and uses bewildering reasoning. The bias shown is astonishing for an organisation which claims to champion objectivity and justice," Kovacs said in the statement.

FH gave Hungary's media a score of 36 for 2011 as against 23 a year before. Countries falling into the category between 0-30 have free press, from 31-60 they score partly free, according to FH's methodology.

(MTI)