Across rural Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban dominates the media landscape. His allies control the major regional newspapers, which provide supportive coverage of Mr. Orban’s anti-immigrant agenda and his methodical erosion of the country’s democratic checks and balances. Critical, independent outlets are mostly absent.
But last November, that looked set to change, if modestly, as the State Department announced a $700,000 grant to help nurture independent media outlets in rural Hungary. To the State Department, the grant would continue a longstanding American effort to promote free speech. To the Orban administration, it was another provocation from the United States, a country that had treated the prime minister like a pariah since 2012.
