Keyword – Hungarian information policy

Kékesdi-Boldog, Dalma:

How Hungarian radio and Radio Free Europe communicated the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A comparative analysis

On 26 of April 1986 1:23 AM a fatal nuclear accident occurred in the Soviet Union. Reactor No. 4 of the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant exploded, and harmful radioactive fall-out effused. The accident threatened most of the population of the Eastern Block, but the people – including those in Hungary – could not receive appropriate information about the threat because of the Cold War context and authoritarian media policy. Based on archival sources, this paper explores how the Chernobyl case was managed on Hungarian Radio an the Hungarian broadcasts of Radio Free Europe. It focuses on what was aired about the Hungarian nuclear radiation level and what health protection recommendations were issued in Hungary.

Keywords: Chernobyl disaster, Hungarian information policy, Hungarian Radio, Radio Free Europe, soviet/ communist media system

Kékesdi-Boldog, Dalma:

How Hungarian Television reported on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster

Previous research on the Hungarian media representation of the Chernobyl nuclear accident looked into written and audio sources. Findings show that in the Soviet/communist media system, the daily newspapers have only communicated the danger indirectly, with only implicit hints. Despite a few hours of censorshipfree broadcasting on Hungarian Radio, the communication of the potential health effects of the disaster was neither accurate, nor satisfactory. Using the records of Hungarian Television, this paper attempts to explore the visual communication of the disaster and tries to reveal how state television applied visual communication tools. It asks the question of whether television viewers received more factual and detailed information about the accident than newspaper readers and radio listeners did.

Keywords: Chernobyl, Hungarian information policy, Hungarian Television, nuclear disaster, Soviet/communist media system, state socialism, visual communication