More than 90 journalists from Hungary’s state news agency, MTI, have called for the immediate restoration of impartial news coverage following a pledge by parliamentary election winner Peter Magyar, leader of the TISZA party, to make radical changes to the state media, according to a letter obtained by Reuters.
Magyar, whose centre-right party won a landslide victory in Sunday’s election in Hungary, ending 16 years of rule by outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, said that his government would suspend news broadcasts by state media until impartial news coverage could be ensured as part of broader moves to restore press freedoms.
Critics at home and abroad complain that the Hungarian state news media have become a mouthpiece of the Orbán-led government, whose government has gradually tailored the public media to its own needs since it came to power in 2010.
“Our goal is to restore the journalistic autonomy of the national news agency. So that we can once again decide which issues to cover journalistically and in what way, based on our own professional values,” the journalists wrote in their letter dated yesterday.
The letter, first cited by the news website HVG, is addressed to Anita Altorzje, the CEO of Duna Médiaszolgáltató Zrt, Hungary’s public broadcaster, and Daniel Papp, the CEO of the public media company MTVA, which is responsible for content production.
The two entities did not immediately respond to questions for comment from Reuters.
Mayar said his government, with a strong majority in parliament, would pass a new media law, set up a new media regulator and “create professional conditions for state media to essentially do what they need to do”.
“Every Hungarian deserves a public media service that broadcasts the truth,” Magyar told public radio station Kossuth yesterday, where Orban was a weekly guest while opposition politicians were rarely invited.
Mayar is expected to announce the composition of his government by the middle of next month.
“The new government has an important opportunity to begin to address the rights crisis in Hungary by restoring the rule of law and breathing new life into democratic institutions,” Lydia Gol, a senior researcher in the Europe and Central Asia chapter of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement this week.
