CNN news misrepresented by most popular Hungarian news site Index.hu

Index.hu is the most popular online news site in Hungary, with hundreds of thousands of daily readers.

While index.hu occassionally makes false accusations (and gets officially threatened with a trial after falsely accusing the M1 television channel of manipulating its evening news), it did not have a problem with manipulating and misrepresenting the news of the CNN. Let's see the Index.hu article in question: Gyurcsány elvitelétől hangos a világ. (in English: the world is loud after Gyurcsany [former Hungarian prime minister] is taken by police).

The last-but-one paragraph of the article is the following (it's in Hungarian, but I've translated it to English a few lines later): 

"A CNN cikkében az LMP délelőtti akciójáról megemlíti, hogy 43 tüntetőt – köztük 15 képviselőt – őrizetbe vettek. Az LMP délutáni demonstrációjáról is hírt adtak, amin mintegy ezer ember vett részt. A CNN kitér arra is, hogy a kormány intézkedései aláássák a magyar demokráciát, és az alkotmányos változások inkább az önkényuralmi formának felelnek meg, amit az új választójogi törvény és a sajtószabadság visszaszorítása is jelez."

 In English, it is as follows (I  used bold and red color to emphasize the interesting parts):

"About the morning demonstraction of LMP [an opposition party in Hungary], the CNN mentions in its article that 43 protesters – including 15 MPs – were arrested.  It also reported about the afternoon demonstration of LMP, which had almost one thousand participants. CNN also mentions that the government's acts undermine Hungarian democracy, and that the constitutional changes are more suited to an authoritarian regime, which is indicated by the new election law and by the curbing of press freedom as well."

We had an easy job finding the original CNN article , as the above-quoted paragraph precisely links to the original CNN article. This does not contain the statements written by Index.hu in their exact form, and it is obvious that they were inspired by the below two paragraphs of the CNN article (I used bold to mark the important parts):

"Critics have accused the ruling Fidesz Party of undermining democracy and making constitutional changes more suited to an authoritarian regime. Hungary is a member of the European Union and NATO.

Orban is accused of tightening his grip on power by redrawing election boundaries, installing loyal judges in the country's courts and curbing media freedom."

Comparing the above ones with the article of Index.hu, it is obvious that Index.hu is unambigiously misrepresenting the news of CNN: it intentionally omits the information content of the bold parts, and therefore it severely twists the original meaning. That is, the twisted meaning is that the CNN reported the following as news:

"[..] the government's acts undermine Hungarian democracy, and the constitutional changes are more suited to an authoritarian regime, which is indicated by the new election law and the curbing of press freedom as well."

As opposed to the above meaning, CNN reports that the above claims are stated by critics, by those who accuse Orban ("Orban is accused of..."). That is, Index.hu exactly omits the elements that ensure the objectiveness and unbias of CNN's article. Therefore, Index.hu attempted to misrepresent particular statements as the news of CNN. The CNN article in question never included these particular statements in the meaning presented by Index.hu.

What Index.hu did greatly exceeds press freedom and journalistic freedom, since it severely twists the original meaning of CNN's news.

The fact that Index.hu linked to the original CNN article is no excuse. 99.99% of Index.hu readers will not open the original article, and Index.hu knows this very well. Moreover, even if a Hungarian reader would open the original CNN article, he/she might not understand English, and therefore he or she has no chance to recognize the severe manipulation of Index.hu.