The ownership of Hungary’s media has continued to become increasingly concentrated in the hands of oligarchs allied with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ultra-nationalist government, with the result that the media landscape has been transformed in recent years. The most important critical media outlets have had to close, while the editorial independence of others has been threatened by the presence of pro-government oligarchs on their boards, among their shareholders or within the financial institutions that fund them. The past year also saw the creation of a pro-Orbán consortium of around 500 privately-owned newspapers, cable TV channels, radio stations and news websites, and almost all of the regional daily newspapers. By declaring this consortium to be of “strategic national importance in the public interest,” the government has in practice prevented competing media outlets or media sector representatives from opposing it.