Hungary’s public media provider: left-liberals spreading false information

Hungary’s left-liberal parties are violating the principle of press freedom, Dániel Papp, the chief executive of Hungary’s public media provider MTVA, and Menyhért Dobos, the chief executive of public media operator Duna Médiaszolgáltató, said in a statement on Saturday.

They said Hungarian public media was on the receiving end of more and more political attacks from the left and that the left was spreading false information in an effort to “turn millions of Hungarian citizens against the channels they watch and listen to”.

As it has done in the past, Hungary’s public media will continue to reject “smears and all attempts at political influencing”, the statement said.

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Papp and Dobos emphasised that public media did not serve politics but rather the nation and its citizens, and covered all developments, remarks, acts of aggression, stories of happiness or grief happening in Hungary or elsewhere in the world.

They said MTVA was covering Russia’s aggression in Ukraine “regardless of how those who will be demonstrating on Sunday try to lie about it”, as well as the situation of Ukrainians for whom public media was producing a week-long charity programme.

Public media also covers developments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brussels and Berlin the same way it covers the political positions of the left-wingers protesting right now and those of the government and the ruling parties, they said.

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“We cover it even if certain left-wing politicians don’t like it,” the statement said.

Papp and Dobos said that even though the left was trying to present the demonstration planned for Sunday as a demonstration for the freedom of the press, “they are the ones violating the constitutionally and legally protected right to the freedom of expression”.

“To them — as seen with their attempts at interference and use of physical violence — the freedom of the press only extends as far as their opinions are the ones getting covered, as far as it serves them,” the statement said.