STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have some perspective on what the Trump administration really intends for independent parts of American society. When the administration struck at Harvard University, it officially was responding to antisemitism and diversity policies. Last month on this program, we asked Harvard President Alan Garber why else he thinks his university is a target.
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ALAN GARBER: I don't know fully what the motivations are, but I do know that there are people who are fighting a cultural battle.
INSKEEP: Some conservatives do have a plan for universities and the media, which they talked up long before the Trump administration acted. They say they are inspired by the example of Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban has held power for 15 years. Leila Fadel was just there and is just back. Welcome home.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Thank you.
INSKEEP: So let's start with the universities. What did Hungary's government under Orban do?
FADEL: Well, basically, when Prime Minister Viktor Orban came to power, all of the universities, for the most part, were state-funded but academically independent.
INSKEEP: Right.
FADEL: And so what happened was Orban privatized the universities, private foundations, funneled state and EU funds into these private foundations and created board of trustees that were filled with loyalists to him and his party to tell the universities what to do. So for me, the top line is the money. The money is needed for these institutions to flourish, and Orban used the money to then control the universities. I spoke to Balint Magyar, who's a former education minister and a senior research fellow at the Democracy Institute at the Central European University, which was a prominent university in Hungary and they had to move their campus to Vienna.
BALINT MAGYAR: As most of the students came from non-EU countries, they needed special permissions to come to Hungary, visas. And I think this was the major blackmailing capacity of the government which forced the university to move to Vienna.
INSKEEP: I'm noticing, Leila, you're saying that the government got control of the streams of money to universities and also seemed to have acted against international students. Did this work, though? Does the government control universities?
FADEL: For the most part, yes. Now universities, professors, academics, experts, the ones that remained independent or wanted to remain independent left and went to other parts of Europe. Again, it's part of the European Union, so easier to travel within the union.
INSKEEP: And then what did the government do over the last 15 years to independent journalism?
FADEL: So there what Orban did, again, it was about funding and defunding. So the state television, which state-funded but independent, fired the majority of people in there, repacked it with people who would be willing to run the government line. I mean, we actually spoke to a journalist who worked at state TV and ultimately left because she didn't want to be part of what she called dividing the people. Her name was Krisztina Balogh (ph), and she talked about one assignment she got.
KRISZTINA BALOGH: The editor asked me, OK, make a report about and ask a doctor who says that this illness is coming back with the refugees.
FADEL: Diseases?
BALOGH: Yes.
FADEL: And what were you thinking when she asked you that?
BALOGH: It's not me. I don't want this, but I needed to do this because it was my work, and I got the salary from this. So that's why I did it. But I felt bad.
INSKEEP: This is a classic thing you're not supposed to do in journalism...
FADEL: Right.
INSKEEP: ...Rather than looking for answers, go looking for the answer that you're supposed to find.
FADEL: Exactly. And this followed the government line. I mean, Orban had these anti-immigration policies. He was feeding a steady diet through the media of really demonizing language around immigrants, and beyond just the state press. He was also calling on allies and friends to buy or found other press institutions and create this sort of right-wing media conglomerate. Much of the money, advertising in Hungary, comes from the state. And so they starved independent and opposition press of any financial oxygen.
INSKEEP: So now I want to know how it would be that American conservatives would get so excited about this political activity in a landlocked central European country of about 9.5 million people.
FADEL: I mean, whatever you think of Orban, his critics and his detractors say that actually Orban put Hungary on the map and in the consciousness of American conservatives. We spoke to Boris Kalnoky, who is a prominent German journalist of Hungarian descent and the head of the School of Journalism at the state-funded educational institute Mathias Corvinus Collegium - or MCC - and he describes it this way.
BORIS KALNOKY: The reach out came from Hungary to thinkers, speakers, politicians in the Anglo-Saxon world, but then worldwide. And we had Americans coming over to study how Orban dealt with what they call the deep state. How can you not only win an election, but after that, actually be in power and implement your program for which you have a mandate from your voters?
FADEL: So as Orban becomes kind of a pariah in the European Union - they're withholding funds over antidemocratic practices, breaches of EU law - U.S. conservatives see Orban as an example to follow because not only was he elected, he was able to kind of erode the checks and balances so that he could get his policies in place.
INSKEEP: This reach out, as he calls it, seems to have worked, given that you were there, Leila, at the same time as the Conservative Political Action Conference - or CPAC - which is an annual American institution that now has a version of itself in Hungary.
FADEL: Right, fourth year in a row. The first ever CPAC in Europe was in Hungary. That's expanded since - it was in Poland this year. And Matt Schlapp is the chairman of CPAC. Here's what he had to say about Orban.
MATT SCHLAPP: One of the reasons why he has a strong bond with President Trump is he had power, and then he lost power, and then he found a way to regain power. They understand that to be successful in the current environment, in this country and in America and in a lot of other important countries, do you accommodate the globalists? Or do you fight the globalists?
INSKEEP: Leila, I listen to your reporting. I heard Hungarians who favor Orban saying, wait a minute, we're not antidemocratic. We're for democracy. We're the people who won the elections. What's the case against that?
FADEL: Yeah, I mean, like you said, a lot of people said the only thing that's keeping Orban in power is that people keep voting for him. But his critics say, yes, Hungary has the trappings of democracy. You go, you vote, you pick a leader. But because a healthy democracy needs to have an independent judiciary, needs to have an independent media, needs to have a civil society that is independent of the government, they say their democracy is decaying around them.
And this echo chamber is happening in which they dominate the media landscape, and so any checks or accountability-type journalism or research is then stifled. And the latest issue is a new law that's coming through that they say is based on a Russian law, foreign agent law, which basically would blacklist any organization taking funding from outside of Hungary. Hungary starving a lot of these organizations from state funding, these people turn abroad.
INSKEEP: Leila, thanks for your great reporting. It's good to see you.
FADEL: Thank you.
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