Public Media

• Hungary's state broadcaster went off-air on Tuesday after the new government, led by Péter Magyar, installed interim management. • The shutdown followed a purge of staff members accused of maintaining a pro-Orbán bias, with the screen displaying a public apology. • This move signals a drastic shift in the country's media landscape, aiming to eliminate political propaganda and ensure public media "cannot lie."

Péter Magyar hails ‘end of propaganda broadcasts’ as Kossuth radio and M1 TV channels suspend transmissionHungarian public media outlets close to Viktor Orbán have suspended broadcasting, the country’s prime minister said as he hailed efforts to dismantle the longtime nationalist leader’s control over information.Péter Magyar, who ousted Orbn in a landslide election victory in April, wrote on Facebook: “A historic day. Today marks the end of propaganda broadcasts on public media platforms. They lied at night, they lied during the day, they lied on every wavelength. That is now over.” Continue reading...

• NTU linguistics professor Luke Lu argues that Singapore should rethink its long-standing ban on dialects in public media. • The proposal suggests that localized forms of Hokkien and Teochew, which are unique products of regional multiculturalism, should no longer require special approval for broadcast. • This shift is not intended to introduce dialects into the formal education system or actively promote them, but rather to remove restrictive barriers.

UK is latest country to set minimum age for social media access but big tech is fighting back globally against curbsSocial media bans go global: big tech faces a reckoning after Australia’s crackdownArturo Béjar, a former employee turned whistleblower at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has talked to parents around the world. He says they share the same perspective: they dread the day their children are old enough to go online.Governments appear to be listening too. This month the UK became the latest country to state that it would set a minimum age of 16 for accessing major social media platforms. Social media bans are becoming a legislative trend after the precedent set by Australia last year, when it imposed an age limit on platforms including Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Elon Musk’s X, TikTok and Snapchat. Continue reading...

‘Living archive’ will mark loss of Northumberland landmark with storytelling, sound and sculpture using saved woodA new artwork will transform preserved wood from the felled Sycamore Gap tree into a “living archive” after a public vote.The community arts charity Helix Arts and George King Architects were named winners of the vote on Saturday, after being shortlisted for a National Trust commission in March. Continue reading...

Journalists face rising threats while media ownership is concentrated in fewer hands, leading civil liberties group warnsJournalists in the EU face increasing levels of harassment, threats and violence, while news outlets are owned by a shrinking number of proprietors and public trust in the media has plummeted, a report has found.The Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) said the findings of its fifth annual media freedom report, released on Tuesday, should place EU officials “on high alert”, with media freedom and pluralism “under sustained attack” across mainland Europe. Continue reading...