In 2006, we were in Budapest, watching TV, and they had a thing where you could SMS a number and your text would scroll across the screen. My daughter, then 12, was amazed that people were allowed to criticize the government in public like that.
My wife is Hungarian - I'm American and the kids have grown up in the States mostly. They're bilingual, but culturally essentially American, with some hybrid vigor from bicultural exposure.
A lot has changed since (again) in Hungary, and to many this is no longer the case, unfortunately.
The most popular call-in radio is being killed, because officials feel, that they need the frequency for another music station. It is an open secret, that it is the prime forum for the criticism of the current government.
For the record, the call-in show's radio station also obtained the frequency in a shady way, displacing classic fm to be a traffic news station (hence its original name), then ending up being the outlet of the most senior professional journalists -- whom have seen much of the old regime.
Yeah, my wife's Hungarian, and we're coming to Budapest this summer (and maybe staying; she still hasn't decided), so we follow this stuff. Orbán is trying to do everything at once and doing most of it wrong, and I really don't like his media policy. But come on - you don't need media to communicate in Budapest; everybody knows what's going on - because of the jokes they tell each other, if nothing else.
But if a radio show of this nature were shut down in America, most people wouldn't even notice. The media never criticize the people in power here, because the people in power simply own them outright. And by "people in power", of course, I don't mean the government. That hasn't been true for a long time.
In Hungary, this government has been really pushy (of course, the last government was far more corrupt), but Hungarians actually care about that.
Anyway, you don't need to worry, because my wife is going to be there in May and I'd hate to be in Orbán's shoes when she gets off the plane.
Chew on that a bit.