First Independent Paper Published in Hungary Since 1948

Communist Hungary’s first independent daily newspaper since 1948 has hit the streets with a pledge to supply uncensored news.

Based in this provincial wine-making town about 100 miles south of Budapest, the paper called Datum also wants to encourage grass-roots democratic activity in the surrounding region. Later, it wants to reach Budapest, too.

“Hungary needs a liberal daily, liberal in the radical sense,” Editor-in-Chief Ivan Baba told a news conference late Friday to introduce the paper.

“We do not want to be an opposition paper in the traditional sense. . . . We simply want to support every color of democratic activity with a free flow of information.”

Two of the eight pages carry advertising to meet costs not covered by the paper’s newsstand price of 8 cents.

Daily newspapers in Hungary for the past four decades have been either national, linked to Communist-backed organizations and edited in Budapest, or city or county publications in the hands of local Communist Party chiefs.

But reforms launched last May, when Karoly Grosz replaced the veteran Janos Kadar as Communist leader, have given private publishers the right to set up newspapers.