Hungary's tightening vice on its press amounts to "an autocratic crackdown," Philip N. Howard, a professor at the Central European University and at the University of Washington, writes in the New York Times—taking specific aim at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's control of the country's Media Authority, which monitors media competition and issues broadcast licenses:

Media organizations must surrender data about their employees and contracts, as well as editorial and advertising content, at a level of granular detail that no media outlet in any other part of Europe has to provide to their governments. And the Media Authority has been given unusual enforcement powers: This single agency of doubtful independence has at its disposal a full suite of fines, suspensions, license revocations and business closures.

Guess who appoints the people who manage the Media Authority?

Orban's reign, Howard writes, has essentially snuffed out any government dissent from the country's legacy media. Digital press freedom isn't faring well, either: Earlier this year, Gergo Saling, the editor-in-chief of Origo.hu, a popular Hungarian news site, was ousted after publishing stories critical of the government.

And as feared, the Hungarian parliament has adopted a progressive tax on media company's advertising revenue in June, requiring some to pay up to 40 percent. "In effect," Howard writes, "this is a partial nationalization of the industry."

The European Union's recent decision to provide a struggling Hungary with nearly 22 billion euros in assistance, Howard writes, is tantamount to "reinforcing and rewarding Mr. Orban's autocratic tendencies" toward its press. "Europe should not be financing a government that is undermining one of the cornerstones of democracy," he writes.

[Image of Hungarian press protest from 2010 via AP]