http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/world/europe/hungary-newspaper-nepszabadsag.html 2016-10-11 20:48:59 Newspaper Closes in Hungary, and Hungarians See Government’s Hand Nepszabadsag, Hungary’s largest opposition paper, has halted publication after years of financial losses. Some also say political interference played a role. === BUDAPEST — Roland Baksa, an investigative reporter at But on Saturday, Mr. Baksa found that he could access neither his work email nor the newspaper’s website, including its archives. Mediaworks, the parent company, had replaced the website of the newspaper, Nepszabadsag, with Mr. Baksa and many of his roughly 50 colleagues, whose jobs are now in limbo, suspect another motivation: interference from the government of Hungary’s populist, right-wing prime minister, In the newspaper’s final week, it reported that the head of Mr. Orban’s cabinet office had flown to a celebrity wedding by helicopter — an exorbitant expense that he had initially denied. The same week, Mr. Baksa revealed that the governor of the central bank was living in a luxury apartment owned by the president of the Hungarian Banking Association. Earlier, he had reported on the governor’s romance with a young woman who was consequently hired by the central bank for a record salary. “I was aware these stories might not be to the liking of Viktor Orban’s government,” Mr. Baksa said in an interview, but he was not expecting “the drastic closure of our newsroom.” The newspaper’s deputy editor in chief, Marton Gergely, said he felt “pretty sure Viktor Orban himself is hiding in the background.” The state minister for government communication, Bence Tuzson, rejected those accusations. “The true violation of freedom of the press would be if the government interfered with the decision of a media owner,” he said in an interview, denying any role by Mr. Orban’s government. Szilard Nemeth, the co-chairman of Fidesz, Mr. Orban’s political party, noted that Nepszabadsag was the Communist Party’s mouthpiece from 1956 — when the Soviet Union cracked down on a Hungarian uprising that threatened to challenge its sway over Eastern Europe — until 1989, when communism fell. “My humble opinion is that it was high time Nepszabadsag shut down unexpectedly,” he told reporters. Hungarians do not seem convinced by the official explanation. Social media pages have filled with expressions of support for the newspaper. On Saturday night, several thousand people protested in front of Parliament, some of them demanding that Mr. Orban resign. “I was not a frequent reader of the newspaper, but it’s important we have pluralism of media in Hungary,” said one of the demonstrators, Eva Tubakos, 54, an unemployed event organizer. “The problem is our government does not bear any sort of criticism. The way Nepszabadsag was shut down is not the sign of a healthy democracy.” Judit Bayer, a media lawyer who teaches at Budapest Business School, said that Mr. Orban, in office since 2010, had learned from his previous stint as prime minister, from 1998 to 2002. His government passed a law in 2011 that tightened control over media outlets, prompting hand-wringing among Criticism of Mr. Orban is not unheard-of. His former ally and business partner Lajos Simicska — he was once his university roommate — owns two newspapers, one of them a weekly, as well as a radio station and a TV station. The two men had a rift last year, and Mr. Simicka’s companies have become critical of Mr. Orban. Gabor Polyak, an analyst at Last year, the country’s second-largest TV channel, previously owned by a German company, was sold to a Hungarian-American film producer — who is also a government official — and its editorial stance became strongly pro-government. But Mr. Polyak said that Nepszabadsag was too much of an established brand to be converted into a pro-government title. Mediaworks, the parent company of Nepszabadsag, is owned by Vienna Capital Partners, an Austrian-based private equity firm. Heinrich Pecina, its principal owner, did not respond to messages requesting comment on the decision to close the paper. Andras Petho “It definitely seems to fit in a familiar pattern,” said Mr. Petho, who now runs an investigative journalism website, Tamas Bodoky Gabor Borokai, the chief editor at