Hungary’s new prime minister, Peter Magyar, is temporarily suspending public media news broadcasts.Image: keystone
Jul 8, 2026, 08:49Jul 8, 2026, 08:49
Hungary’s new government under Prime Minister Peter Magyar has ordered state television and radio stations to temporarily stop all news broadcasts. On Tuesday afternoon, the program was completely canceled for four hours; only a message appeared on the screens, which stated, among other things: “The public media are not allowed to lie. We apologize for doing this for so many years!”
State television later went back on the air, but since then has only shown films, series, entertainment and educational programs. Prime Minister Magyar commented on Facebook: “A historic day. Today the broadcast of propaganda on public media platforms ends. (…) This is now over.”
For several hours, Hungarian viewers of public media only see white lettering on a black screen.Image: EPA MTI
Magyar’s predecessor, the right-wing populist Viktor Orban, who was voted out in April, had subjected the public broadcasters in Hungary to the strict control of his followers. The news broadcasts on state television and radio no longer met the required balance and fairness criteria, as critics noted. Under Orban, news programs largely offered one-sided praise for the government at the time.
A few days ago, Magyar’s government, which is led by the bourgeois Tisza party, replaced the lines of the state broadcasting holding company MTVA and those of the stations under its control. The new holding management distributed a message via the MTI news agency that work was currently underway to set up a new news editor-in-chief. As this process progresses, “the news programs would restart on a continuous basis.”
Orban criticized the government’s discontinuation of the program with sharp words. “Another step of arbitrariness by the Tisza party,” he wrote on Facebook. “If you are interested in the truth – go to Hir TV!” Hir TV is a private news channel controlled by oligarchs close to Orban. (nil/sda/dpa)