Thousands of Hungarians gathered outside the headquarters of the country’s state television on Saturday, protesting against what they described as the government’s “propaganda machine” and calling for an independent public service media.
The protestors, from the opposition TISZA party, say that the state broadcaster MTVA is running biased propaganda, featuring only politicians from Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party and government, and analysts repeating their narrative.
The centre-right TISZA party, led by media-savvy political newcomer, Peter Magyar, is posing the biggest challenge to right-wing nationalist Orban since he swept to power in 2010.
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While the public media primarily serves as a government mouthpiece, private media is largely controlled by allies of Orban’s Fidesz.
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The UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression Irene Khan has said there was “a distorted media environment in Hungary where pluralism, diversity and independence of media is being questioned.”
The stupid thing is it wasn’t even that, the Hungarian Socialist Party got elected multiple times even this century. It’s just that the party leader of the socialists had this awful leaked speech to his party members, basically admitting they are doing fuck all but steal what they could.
Orbán was elected with a supermajority as a protest vote against the socialists, and immediately changed the constitution and voting laws, and that’s how this mess got started. Unlimited EU funds to steal, and the migrant crisis in 2015 cemented that.
The reason there has been no credible opposition is that this ex-prime minister has stayed in politics and tainted all opposition attempts since, since he still has some support from a small but stable base, nobody could form an opposition block with or without him.