On March 18, 2015, Index on Censorship hosted its annual Freedom of Expression Awards. The event honors individuals and groups whose impact on the fight against censorship around the world is paramount. Privax was honored to sponsor freedom of expression Awards. In addition, we had the pleasure of giving training in digital security winners who will help surveillance and censorship circumvention measures, wherever they are.
More often than not the stories behind these extraordinary people escape the mainstream press in favor of holding. One such story is about Tamas Bodoky, Activism Award winner 2015. Digital Bodoky is the editor and founder of atlatszo.hu, a watchdog NGOs and investigative journalism website that rocked the government Hungarian with breaking stories. Atlatszo--specializes name means "transparent" in advocating investigative journalism and access to information. His Facebook page has over 62,000 fans and their website receives over 300,000 unique visitors per month. Because of the secret nature of Hungarian politics, Atlatszo led the Freedom of Information (FOI) applications in the country. He has treated more than 5000 applications; deposit of more than 100 legal requests of this nature and winning 60% of them. Consequently, the government majority has presented a bill to limit the FOI legislation which has been dubbed "Lex Atlatszo".
first legal achieving Atlatszo was to obtain a privilege "for journalists, the right of journalists not to disclose the identity of confidential sources recognized by the . media law in Hungary Among their other accomplishments is a Bribe Tracker Crowdsourced; means an online tool for citizens to report their experiences of everyday corruption by providing details of time, place and amount a witness bribe.
After freedom of expression Awards, I had an opportunity to talk to Tamas Bodoky and shed light on the beginning of the site, its objectives and its perspective the future
Mahmoud Hamdy :. How would you describe Atlatszo
Tamas Bodoky: Atlatszo.hu is a watchdog NGOs and news site for investigative journalism in order to promote transparency and freedom of information in Hungary. It produces investigative reports, accepts information from whistleblowers filed freedom of information requests, and begins the freedom of information lawsuit where its applications are denied. Atlatszo.hu operates an anonymous whistleblowing platform Tor (Magyarleaks), a request for access to information generator for the general public (Kimittud) and crowdsourcing platform to report anonymous everyday corruption (Fizettem).
MH: When and why did you start Atlatszo
TB: atlatszo.hu We started in 2011, because we believe that the large media public has become skewed in Hungary. In the last decade, the major media in Hungary has become a tool of groups of political and economic interests, and it is often not journalists but media owners and politicians who decide what can be published and what can become a problem in a publication. The result is a very limited press freedom in Hungary. There are many taboos, many important stories remain untold, and many cases of corruption are not disclosed, though there are whistleblowers and they have evidence
MH:.? How are you funded
TB:% crowdfunding 50 with small gifts and "subscriptions" 3 euros a month. 50% of major international donors such as the Open Society Foundations, NGOs Fund Norway, Fritt Ord
MH :. What is the importance of unrestricted Internet access to you
TB: Very important, this is a completely web based organisation.We experiencing increased monitoring of the state of Internet, which makes us worry, especially as regards the protection of sources, since we communicate with some of our online sources.
MH: for a bit of a local context, can you please tell us how difficult is it to publish critical articles in the mainstream national media? And those who had published Atlatszo that won more attention
TB: The first problem is that traditional media lack the resources to do journalistic research. If done by someone else - like atlatszo.hu or investigative journalists working elsewhere - traditional media could pick up the story. What happens very often to us, the most important parts is how the political elite or the friends and family of the Prime Minister direct public funds in private companies via tenders public diverted. For individual stories visit their website
MH :. How have people reacted in Hungary after publishing controversial stories such as the control of the state media
TB: Hungary is deeply divided politically, some people become our fans , others slather us according to their political views. It is difficult to have a rational discussion about the facts in Hungary, everything is too politicized
MH:.? Have you had the pressure of local and / or regional
TB :. we experienced a smear campaign calling us foreign agents and even traitors by the media funded by the government, and one of our institutional donors, the local NGO Fund in Norway was considered by the authorities
MH: what is the main criticism that you have faced in the past
TB: Being politically biased or in the service of the political opposition. This is not the case, we regularly publish articles on the parties and center-left politicians wrongdoing. However, since the Conservatives came to power, most of our stories cover government corruption. Today it is mostly foreign funding, which will be criticized
MH :. How do you respond to this criticism
TB: about being politically biased: we communicate about our work passed under the socialist governments of the past, when our journalists, including myself Similarly, only expose government corruption as well. About foreign funds: First, we made jokes about it, like T-shirts "Soros Army" infamous. At the same time we accelerated our crowdfunding campaigns to reach more than 50% crowdfunding, we have successfully last year. This means that we have a local constituency willing to pay for our free content, we have thousands of local supporters engaged
MH :. Have your stories resulted in a policy change in the EU level? / Did anyone reach out to you to Brussels for more insight on some of the great stories you uncovered
TB: We know from sources that we are noticed and have an informal impact on the EU level, but we are not aware of official policy changes, and we do not have official contacts in Brussels. However, our stories sometimes trigger investigations and EU level, as happened in the case of the son of PM Viktor Orbán in law, which the company has won huge amounts of EU funds on embezzled public markets.
MH: What is next for you
TB: I am dedicated to run the org and stabilize or even increase funding to date, $ 0,000 per year level. We intend to increase the percentage of crowdfunding and other income to 70%, and cut funding for OSF to 30% to avoid donor dependence and legitimacy problems. We want to attract journalists increasingly experienced investigative work with us to increase the number of readers have more impact on public life in Hungary.
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