ABSTRACT
Elemer Hankiss has described Hungarian Radio and Television's 'war ofindependence': his attempt to ron Hungarian state television along the lines of an idealised BBC, providing informative but unbiased, or at least balanced, broadcasting. The concept ofbalance on the BBC itself was established in circumstances similar to those in Hungary. Throughout the 1930s the Labour Party had feIt very badly treated by the BBC and a new commitment to political balance was one of Labour's conditions for participation in the wartime coalition government. Balance on the BBC therefore owed as much to a political deal between riyal parties that needed each other in anational crisis as to any abstract conception of justice or fair play (Seaton and Pimlott 1987) - not unlike the circumstances that, according to Elemer Hankiss, led to the new democratic regime's short-lived commitment to balance on Hungarian radio and television.
