<\/p>\n
Last November, we published a behind-the-scenes account of the closure of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g<\/a>, Hungary’s biggest daily newspaper. Andr\u00e1s Peth\u0151, who led the reporting team, is explaining how the story was made.<\/em><\/p>\n When we choose our stories at Direkt36 we are trying to avoid topics that are covered by other news organizations. It is because it\u2019s much harder to do in-depth investigations if that story is chased by many journalists. We made an exception wit the closure of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g and this decision was based party on personal reasons.<\/p>\n Two years before we had gone through something similar when Origo, where we used to work, exploded under political pressure. Even though that story was covered extensively by the local and even international press I had the feeling that nobody took a really deep dive into the story. It was sad to see this because I was sure that the public could have learned a lot about the political and financial limits of Hungarian media companies if somebody had told the inside story of what led to the collapse of Origo. (When editor-in-chief Gerg\u0151 S\u00e1ling was forced out of his job because of a politically sensitive story, the whole news desk resigned. A few of us created Direkt36 some months later.)<\/p>\n We could not do the reporting of the Origo story because we were part of it. But we did not face such ethical obstacles with N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g. And even though the paper\u2019s suspension in October 2016 created just as big a storm as we had gone through two years earlier but I was sure that in a few weeks the reporters will move on to other stories, leaving many details untouched.<\/p>\n First I consulted with my fellow editor, Gerg\u0151 S\u00e1ling, and then shared the idea with the rest of the team at our weekly meeting. We were all curious of what happened to N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g so nobody had to be convinced that this is a story, which deserves a closer look.<\/p>\n In general, our investigative projects take months and in most cases one reporter works on it with the help of an editor. It was clear, however, that we did not have that much time with N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, which was a hot news story. We gave ourselves one month to complete the story and changed our routine as well. We assigned to reporters, B\u00e1lint Fab\u00f3k and Andr\u00e1s Szab\u00f3, to the story and I alsi did not limit my work to editing but also participated in reporting as well.<\/p>\n This project was special in the method as well. For most stories, we are looking for hard evidence, documents and data but we knew that in the case of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g we will have to rely primarily on human sources. There was no paper trail about how the paper came under political pressure because it never happens through emails or formal letters.<\/p>\n Therefore, our method was fairly simple. We had to talk to as many people familiar with the N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g story as possible. This included people who worked at the paper and the publishing company but also other actors in the media industry and of course political players who had knowledge about what role politics played.<\/p>\n We spoke with these people on background. This meant that we guaranteed anonimity to the sources so that they can talk about confidential details candidly. Some people later gave us approval for using their names in the story but in most cases we could just describe their position (for example: \u201ea former N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g employee\u201d). Some told us that we cannot refer to them in any way in the story and we could use the information they told us only if we could corroborate it with other sources.<\/p>\n The advantage of the \u201eon background\u201d chats is that people are willing to tell us things that they would not tell publicly. The danger in these often wideranging talks is that the sources can share with you a lot of unsubstantiated information. Therefore, we have to be extra careful when using these details. We often went back to the sources to ask for more details, we pressed them to tell us how they obtained the information and asked them to point us to other sources, who can confirm what they said.<\/p>\n For instance, if a source told us about an interesting meeting, we always asked who else were present so that we can interview them as well. In the story, we only described events that were described to us by multiple sources. We were especially careful with dates, times and locations, because our experience showed that people may be pretty good at recalling what happened but they are quite bad at remembering the circumstances.<\/p>\n In the end, we spoke with nearly 30 people, and most of these conversations took hours. We took detailed notes of each interview and collected them in a shared folder, to which all three of us had access. We were in constant contact and held several meetings about how to proceed with the story. After the first round of interviews we could identify the main actors and the most important turning points of the story and in the following reporting we concentrated on them.<\/p>\n This is how we could reconstruct the behind-the-scenes story of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g. We are not claiming that there is nothing left to find out but we believe that we provided the public with the fullest account written yet.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last November, we published a behind-the-scenes account of the closure of N\u00e9pszabads\u00e1g, Hungary’s biggest daily newspaper. Andr\u00e1s Peth\u0151, who led the reporting team, is explaining how the story was made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":2592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[456,19],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[522],"aioseo_notices":[],"fimg_url":["https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/nepszabadsag_cimlapi_illusztracio-1.jpg",1200,735,false],"authors":[{"term_id":522,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"andraspetho","display_name":"Andr\u00e1s Peth\u0151","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Petho-Andras.png","url2x":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Petho-Andras.png"},"author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"Peth\u0151","first_name":"Andr\u00e1s","job_title":"","description":"[:hu]Andr\u00e1s a Direkt36 egyik alap\u00edt\u00f3ja, szerkeszt\u0151je \u00e9s \u00fcgyvezet\u0151 igazgat\u00f3ja. Kor\u00e1bban az Origo vezet\u0151 szerkeszt\u0151je volt, miel\u0151tt a port\u00e1l r\u00e9sze lett a korm\u00e1ny propagandag\u00e9pezet\u00e9nek. Andr\u00e1s dolgozott a BBC World Service-n\u00e9l Londonban \u00e9s a Washington Post t\u00e9nyfelt\u00e1r\u00f3 rovat\u00e1n\u00e1l is. R\u00e9szt vett sz\u00e1mos nagy nemzetk\u00f6zi nyomoz\u00f3 projektben, k\u00f6zt\u00fck a Panama-iratok feldolgoz\u00e1s\u00e1ban. K\u00e9tszer is elnyerte a legjobbnak \u00edt\u00e9lt t\u00e9nyfelt\u00e1r\u00f3 cikkek szerz\u0151inek j\u00e1r\u00f3 Soma-d\u00edjat. T\u00f6bbsz\u00f6r tanult \u00f6szt\u00f6nd\u00edjjal az Egyes\u00fclt \u00c1llamokban: 2008-ban a World Press Institute programj\u00e1ban, 2012-13-ban Humphrey-\u00f6szt\u00f6nd\u00edjask\u00e9nt a Marylandi Egyetemen, 2019-20-ban pedig Nieman-\u00f6szt\u00f6nd\u00edjask\u00e9nt a Harvard Egyetemen. Andr\u00e1s t\u00f6bb magyar egyetemen is tan\u00edtott \u00fajs\u00e1g\u00edr\u00f3 kurzusokat.[:en]Andr\u00e1s is co-founder, editor and executive director of Direkt36. Previously, he was a senior editor for leading Hungarian news site Origo before it had been transformed into the government\u2019s propaganda outlet. He also worked for the BBC World Service in London and was a reporter at the investigative unit of The Washington Post. He has contributed to several international reporting projects, including The Panama Papers and the Pegasus Project. He plays a leading role in the production of Direkt36\u2019s documentaries, including The Dynasty, the award-winning film on the business empire of Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s family. He won the Soma Prize, the prestigious annual award dedicated to investigative journalism in Hungary, three times. He was a World Press Institute fellow in 2008, a Humphrey fellow at the University of Maryland in 2012\/13, and a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2019\/20. Andr\u00e1s has taught journalism courses at Hungarian universities.[:]"}],"tag_names":[],"category_names":[{"name":"Direkt36 is 2 years old","slug":"2-eves-a-direkt36"},{"name":"Background Stories","slug":"nyomozasok-hattertortenetei"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3191"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=3191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}We can only do this work if we have supporters. Become a supporting member now!<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n