Hungary's Public Media Airs Apology, Promises Reform After Years of Disinformation

The disinformation that public service media in Hungary broadcast during the 16 years of Viktor Orban's rule was one of a kind in the EU.

No other public service media in the EU published lies, hate and propaganda on this scale in recent decades.

Some content was reminiscent of the fascist, antisemitic propaganda of the period between the two world wars; other content was similar to the output of Russian state media.

To give but a few examples: Criminal Arab and African migrants who rape defenseless Hungarian girls; a US billionaire with Jewish Hungarian roots who is destroying Hungary's Christian identity; the EU's indoctrination of children with "LGBTQ propaganda;" a Ukrainian mafia state that wants to sacrifice Hungary's younger generation in the war and rob millions of Hungarian pensioners.

Starting a new chapter

But that era is now over.

At 4 p.m. on Tuesday, the news channel M1 broadcast a black screen with the following message: "Public media should not lie. We are sorry for doing it for so long. Public media will now be reformed so they will be independent and trustworthy. Our news service is currently suspended. Stay tuned!"

All news bulletins and political programs broadcast by Hungary's public television and radio channels were replaced by the same apology/announcement.

Only the website of the news agency MTI, which is also part of the public media holding MTVA, went on posting political news.

'They lied at night; they lied during the day'

This is a watershed moment for Hungary.

Nothing like this has ever happened before at the country's state broadcaster — not even when the Communist dictatorship collapsed in 1989/90 and Hungary began transitioning to democracy.

"A historic day. Today marks the end of propaganda broadcasts on public media platforms," Hungary's Prime Minister Peter Magyar posted on Facebook on Tuesday. "They lied at night, they lied during the day, they lied on every wavelength. That is now over," he wrote.

But there is more to this change than just a black screen and a written apology.

The most senior figures at M1 have been removed from their posts. One of these is M1's director, Zsolt Nemeth (nicknamed "Pitbull" for his highly aggressive, confrontational style), and most of M1's directors of programming and senior news editors.

Symbolic time for relaunch

Just under four hours after the black screen appeared, M1 began broadcasting again at exactly 7:56 p.m.

The choice of time (19:56 CET) was no coincidence. It was a nod to the anti-Communist, anti-Soviet revolution of 1956 that was brutally crushed by Soviet troops.

The choice of film that followed was also highly symbolic: "The Witness" is a 1979 Hungarian classic, a political satire about the horrors of Stalinism and its absurd propaganda lies in Hungary.

The black screen with the apology is still visible on the website of Hirado, M1's main news program.

Keeping an election promise

The radical overhaul of Hungary's public service media system was one of Peter Magyar's central campaign promises in the runup to the election on April 12.

Even after his Tisza party's historic landslide victory, hardly a day passed without Magyar attacking the public service broadcasters, calling them a "factory of lies."

And for good reason, too: The story of how his predecessor, Viktor Orban, reshaped Hungary's public-service media — and indeed most of the country's privately owned media, too — and got them to toe the government line, is one of the darkest chapters of his rule.

Shortly after his election victory in the spring of 2010, Orban’s government overhauled Hungary’s media legislation, created the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH) and staffed key regulatory bodies with pro-government figures. Public service media were later brought under tighter central control and consolidated within the MTVA holding company.

In 2011, most independent journalists were either dismissed from public media outlets or left voluntarily.

No balanced reporting

From that point on, the label "public service media" was little more than a formality.

Over the years, MTVA's outlets increasingly degenerated into a mouthpiece that endlessly repeated Orban's propaganda lies in a mantra-like fashion.

In its news and political programs, M1 railed against the EU, US billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, civil society organizations and independent journalists.

Despite the legal obligation to provide balanced reporting, opposition politicians and independent voices virtually disappeared from MTVA channels.

Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, MTVA channels ratcheted up their rhetoric even further. In a striking reversal of victim and aggressor, they created a parallel reality in which Ukraine was portrayed as a kind of evil empire and at times reproduced Russian state propaganda unfiltered.

Orban and Hungary's private media

Orban pursued a similar strategy with Hungary's private media.

Companies controlled by government-aligned oligarchs bought up private media outlets and either brought them into line or shut them down entirely, as happened with the left-wing liberal daily Nepszabadsag in 2016.

Then, on November 28, 2018, Hungarian businesspeople close to Orban "donated" their media assets to the recently established Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA). It was a collective "gift" for which nothing was given or paid in return.

In total, over 476 broadcast, print and online media outlets were transferred to KESMA, encompassing nearly the entire pro-government private media sector in Hungary.

What happens next?

A transitional director was appointed at the MTVA media holding company last week. On Tuesday, that director named an interim leadership team for the M1 news channel.

In a statement, MTVA said that the permanent leadership positions within the holding company would be filled in a public selection process conducted in consultation with social and professional organizations.

Many independent journalists have welcomed the changes in Hungary's media landscape, but they are also demanding genuine participation in the reform process and await further details of the government's plans.

The plan is to staff the supervisory board of a newly restructured media holding company with three representatives each of the government majority, the parliamentary opposition and independent journalists' associations.

Viktor Orban protested the restructuring of public service media on Facebook on Tuesday, calling it "a new step in the Tisza Party's tyranny."

Criticism also came from opposition lawmaker Balazs Nemeth. This is ironic considering Nemeth was a former Hirado news anchor and therefore involved in many of the program's most notorious low points. After M1's screen went black on Tuesday, Nemeth wrote on Facebook: "Hungarian democracy is dead."