SunScreener #16: Michael Koth's Poisoned Chalice

Among our many New Year's resolutions was an honest hope that this year we could be kinder to our friends over at the Budapest Sun, Hungary's best-known English-language newspaper. But our first foray back into the paper in 2005 left us so shaken that we have no choice but to pile back on. To be blunt, this week's Sun is both an ungodly mess and an advertisement for what happens when you sell out your readers in the hopes of copping a few brownie points with important advertisers. Example "A" is the long profile of Michael Koth, the man who recently took over from the departing Karl Hala as general manager of the Inter-Continental Budapest, and written by Sun editor Robin Marshall himself. Even though we once caused him a headache, Hala told us he was a fan of ours because we had a habit of telling the truth. So we will continue the tradition by pointing out to his successor that, to the extent anyone would bother to read it, the puff-piece in question makes both him and his hotel look ridiculous. Indeed, to borrow a phrase from the article, it is a "poisoned chalice," and not just because the editors of the paper managed to misspell "chalice" as "challis," a form of soft, plain and lightweight cloth originally developed in rural England. Which, come to think of it, perfectly describes the Sun, though in addition to "soft", "plain" and "lightweight" we would perhaps add "dirty."

More sad Sun stories after the jump...

• A 1,000-word piece entitled "Looking for second-hand growth" appears to be nothing more than a paid advertisement for the Duna House real estate agency, and written by said company.
• A review of a local pizza parlor raves that it offers what may be the best pizza in town. It's hard to tell if the review is genuine, or a similar example of pay-for-play, though we are left slightly queasy by the fact that the reviewer is the paper's business editor.
• In a rambling, error- and typo-plagued piece curiously entitled (at least on the web) "Beth Thornton by Beth Thornton," columnist Beth Thornton argues that children shouldn't watch lots of graphic TV clips of disasters like the Asian Tsunami because they "lack perspective." Call us old fashioned, but we just think kids shouldn't watch waterlogged bodies and so on because it's likely to scare the crap out of them.
• Hungary enjoyed its best-ever showing in the famed Dakar Rally - this year it was Barcelona to Dakar rather than the more traditional Paris to Dakar - with a 16th place finish by a Magyar-driven truck.
• Writer Richard W. Bruner - father of renowned former Budapest-based blogger Rick Bruner - offers up a long (1,376 word) boring but heartfelt profile of filmmaker Tibor Kocsis.
• Hungarian men like facial hair, the mustachioed Bruner Sr. notes in a much shorter and even more heartfelt column.
• Local companies, especially smaller ones, would like the forint to be weaker.
• A brief report on Annette Bening's Golden Globe win inexplicably fails to mention the similar triumph by half-Hungarian Mariska Hargitay. For their sake we sure hope Mickey doesn't find out.
• Foxy Sun style editor Eszter Balázs says the new Hollywood action pic "Ladder 49" is crappy and clichéd and reflects poorly on firefighters in general.
• Editor Marshall thinks the new Opel Tigra offers good value for money, even though an unnamed business mogul quoted in the epic, 895-word-long review dismisses it as "a bit girly."
• Seemingly oblivious to this little thing called the "Internet," writer Adam LeBor and his editors at the Sun brazenly recycle a three-week old piece from the UK Times about the "Gold Train" that spirited a fortune in looted treasure out of Hungary in the closing days of World War II. While not quite a "quadruple victimization" of the poor folks who had their stuff swiped first by the Nazis and then the Americans, we'd say the article is a crime of sorts against readers of the Sun, who shouldn't have to wait weeks and weeks in Budapest for hot stories to be restituted from the foreigners who smuggle them out of the country in search of higher financial rewards.
• Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány said his first 100 days in office were "not unsuccessful." If only we could say the same thing about the Sun.