The Hungarian prime minister’s highly-disputed allegation was the focus of a 30-minute speech to supporters broadcast by state television channel M1 nine times in 24 hours. For Orban, it was perfect coverage, as he seeks a fourth consecutive term in the country’s toughest election in years, on April 3rd. The leader of the main opposition, Peter Markey-Zei, was also on state television: he had five minutes. Orban’s patriotic message was reinforced by tributes to the pro-government media. “Anyone who has seen or heard Orban’s annual speech of appreciation has seen a successful head of government at the height of his power; in whom lightness and humor were as present as the deep and extremely complex web of a politician,” he said. PestiSrácok government website. On TV2, one of the main commercial channels, an evening news presenter said: “I will support Victor Orban on April 3.” On the other hand, it was difficult to find coverage of this week’s press conference by Márki-Zay on a Hapsburg estate allegedly owned by the Prime Minister’s father, Gyözö Orbán. Márki-Záy spread one of his main themes: corruption. Pro-government news websites such as Origo and Magyar Nemzet did not mention the speech, nor did Hungary’s main news agency, MTI. The agency’s last report on the Hatvanpuszta estate, which is said to have undergone a luxury renovation, was more than 20 years ago. Welcome to the media in Hungary, where NGOs are blacklisted, critical stories are bound, and senior editors instruct journalists to ignore the facts in front of their eyes. “We are in a situation where our situation is now much worse than it was in the 1980s when Hungary was a communist country,” said a man with decades of experience in the Hungarian state media, recalling the days when the country of Central Europe was described as “the happiest barracks” in the Eastern bloc, for its relative freedom. “The situation then regarding censorship and state interference in public service journalism is nowhere, nowhere, the situation at the moment,” the man told the Guardian. People familiar with MTI, a news source for other media, say there is a blacklist of organizations that cannot be mentioned, including Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch. Any attempt to write about their reports “is a job for the rubbish bin,” said a second source. And while there is no ban on reporting to the opposition, “the coverage is deeply flawed in the sense that the coverage provided to pro-government parties and politicians is disproportionately broader in scope and breadth,” one person said. “I would go so far as to say that the distribution is nine to one in favor of the government.” While these comments are reported by the news agency, the rules are said to be the same throughout Hungary’s public broadcaster, MTVA, which hosts state-run television, radio and news agencies. A senior MTI editor is said to have instructed reporters that international news agencies, such as Reuters and the Associated Press, could not be trusted and should be used only for key facts, not the broader context of their articles. Another senior MTVA editor, Balázs Bende, told staff after the victory of Joe Biden not to mention him as President-elect of the United States. “I have marked with Asterisks AGAIN that he is not an elected president and has not won until there is an official result,” Bende wrote in an internal mail, a copy of which was seen by the Guardian. “And I do not care if everyone is okay with it or not.” In another email sent more than a week after Biden’s victory was confirmed, Bede said to Donald Trump: “He only won in the eyes of the FALSE NEWS”. You do not always need instructions. Senior editors are sending messages to the government line, an approach that worked until Russia invaded Ukraine, forcing the traditionally pro-Kremlin Orban government to condemn the war and join the EU in imposing sanctions. The scenario had changed, but no one seemed to have told the state news agency, which described the invasion as a “Russian military operation” – echoing the Kremlin – for the first five days of the war. M1’s pro-Russian stance reflects the authors’ personal agenda and confusion about how to frame the war, rather than any government mandate, according to three sources close to state television. Another person familiar with MTVA said he did not believe the pro-Russian stance was intentional, but reflected the exit of professional journalists to the top. “It’s not political, it is unprofessional. The whole issue is so confusing that there are no clear professional criteria “. Pro-government media and many Facebook associates attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, especially after he told Orban to take sides in the Russian war in his country. Hungarian journalists jokingly joke that Zelensky is the new Soros, a reference to Hungarian-born investor and philanthropist George Soros, who has been the main target of an anti-Semitic slander campaign by the Hungarian government and its supporters. Magyar Nemzet published an article stating that Márki-Zay’s staff had contacted Zelenskiy. The Ukrainian embassy in Budapest accused the newspaper of “anti-Ukrainian terrorism”. Earlier this week, a complaint was lodged with the European Commission alleging that Russian war propaganda was “constantly being spread” by the Hungarian public media. The complaint by the Hungarian Association for Civil Liberties and the Institute for Political Capital accuses the Hungarian authorities of not imposing sanctions on the public media “when they present misinformation as true”. The war may be recent, but the erosion of Hungary’s independent media has been unfolding since Orban was re-elected in 2010. His victory was soon followed by a media law confirming government control of the mainstream media authority. In the years that followed, independent newspapers and websites went bankrupt or were taken over by pro-government buyers, partly suppressed by state-leaning pro-government advertising. Meanwhile, small Hungarian independent media executives have targeted their journalists with Pegasus spyware. By 2021, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights has concluded: “The combined effects of a politically controlled media regulatory and distorting state intervention on the media market have eroded media pluralism and freedom. of expression in Hungary “. As Hungary receded in the international ranking of freedom of the press, EU authorities were accused of remaining. More than a decade after the country disbanded its independent media regulator, the European Commission has promised an act of media freedom to protect independence and pluralism across the EU. For Hungary’s opposition, which is slightly behind in the polls, it is too late to level the playing field. People familiar with the Hungarian media do not expect any change if the current government remains in power: “The light we saw at the end of the tunnel in the late 1980s is now behind us.” Responding to the main points of this report, a government spokesman said that Hungary recognizes and protects the freedom and diversity of the press. Media legislation, the statement said, prevented the emergence of information monopolies and ensured pluralism. “The government is not an authority that runs the public media. If you look at the Hungarian press, if you look at Hungarian radio and television, if you look at social media, you will see that there are so many different points of view, a wide range. This is very different from the media in western societies. “Overall, about 50% of the Hungarian media are Christian Democrats, traditionalists and conservatives, while the other 50% are progressives, liberals, leftists and that is what we call pluralistic media,” he said. MTVA has not responded to requests for comment on the allegations, including those of staff members named in this report.
