minority media
In addition to the maintenance of educational and cultural institutions and the promotion of cultural works and events, minority media services are a key element of the cultural autonomy of national minorities. It is particularly important to maintain an intermediary medium in national communities which can reach the majority of the target group at the same time and in a relatively wide scope, and which can transmit without hindrance specific information that is particularly important for the daily orientation of the community and for the maintenance of cultural patterns.
A minority media is particularly important when the areas inhabited by community members are not typically arranged in blocks, or when there are several types of messages to be delivered to the target audience. Given the fact that commercial media services are essentially profit-oriented, the representation of minority interests is only included in their portfolio in special cases. In general, the most effective and broadest access to nationalities can be achieved through two forms of media service providers, those run by the individual national communities themselves, and the public service media provider.
According to the Fundamental Law of Hungary and Act CLXXIX of 2011 on the Rights of Nationalities (Njt.), national minorities have the right to free access to information and its transmission in their mother tongue, to acquire and disseminate information through mass media, also in their mother tongue, and to access and distribute media services and products. In the areas inhabited by nationalities the State shall promote, also via international treaties, the reception of radio and audio-visual media services from the kin-state (motherland) and access to public service programmes in the mother tongue of the nationalities. In addition to the above a public media service operates in Hungary to preserve and strengthen national minority communities, to nurture and enrich their mother tongue and culture and to satisfy the cultural needs of national minorities. This is achieved primarily through programmes and press products produced by the community’s media outlets in the mother tongue of the national minority community, the basic aim of which is to provide the national minority community with balanced, multi-faceted information in its mother tongue.