Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Péter Magyar used landmark appearances on state-controlled media outlets on Wednesday to reaffirm his intention to suspend their broadcasts as soon as he’s sworn in.
Over the course of his 16-year reign, outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gradually took over 80 percent of the Hungarian media. That dominance was cited as a major issue in EU investigations into the country’s democratic backsliding.
During an interview on the state-controlled M1 television network, Magyar labeled the broadcaster a “factory of lies” and promised to “immediately suspend the false news service that is operating here.”
In a separate appearance on Kossuth state radio, he declared “every Hungarian deserves a public service media that broadcasts the truth.”
As a result of the government’s dominant role in the media, many Hungarians — especially those in the country’s rural areas — only heard or saw coverage curated by the ruling Fidesz party. Magyar himself avoided speaking to state-controlled outlets ahead of the Hungarian election, which he won on Sunday.
“After a year and a half, I am back in the ‘public’ television studio,” Magyar wrote in a post on X. “We have just witnessed the last days of a propaganda machine.”
This week, the prime minister-elect argued the country’s state broadcasters should cease news operations until “conditions for objective, impartial reporting” can be ensured. He additionally proposed a committee of “all parliamentary parties and other leaders” be formed to oversee Hungary’s public media channels, guaranteeing the presence of opposition politicians on broadcasts that meet or exceed “BBC standards.”
Magyar’s landslide election win on Sunday gave his Tisza party the parliamentary supermajority needed to enact these reforms. He plans to change the constitution to similarly demolish key pillars of the former prime minister’s tight grip over judiciary and state companies.
To that end, he’s called for a large swath of top-level resignations, among them that of Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok. After visiting the president — who can veto legislation and send it back to parliament — on Wednesday, Magyar posted a photo of the two with an incendiary caption.
“@DrTamasSulyok is unworthy of representing the unity of the Hungarian nation,” he wrote on X. “He is unfit to serve as the guardian of legality. He is not fit to serve as a moral authority or a role model. Following the formation of the new government, Tamás Sulyok must leave office immediately.”
Magyar used the visit to the presidential palace to capture impromptu images of his defeated rival. In a video posted on Facebook, Orbán can seen on a nearby balcony, pacing while reading documents.
Hungary’s prime minister-elect is filmed mocking his predecessor, raising his arms in satisfaction and declaring the scene to be “absolute cinema.” The film is musically accompanied by Linkin Park’s “What I’ve Done,” emulating a popular internet meme.
“Life is the greatest director,” Magyar wrote in the post’s caption. “While the president was showing off the office he would soon be leaving, I noticed the outgoing prime minister in the next room.”
Magyar’s first target: Hungary’s state-controlled media
Source: Viral Showbiz Pinay
0 Comments