Tuesday, July 7Tuesday, July 7
The Hungarian public broadcaster M1 suspended its news programming on Tuesday, replacing it with a black screen bearing a message in white text: “Public media cannot lie. We apologise for having done so for many years.” The unprecedented on-air apology, broadcast at 16:00 CET, marked the start of a planned transformation of state media under the new government of Prime Minister Péter Magyar, who took office in April after defeating Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in a landslide election.
The message, repeated in a loop, stated that public media are now being restructured to become independent and credible. News bulletins were replaced by films, and the radio counterpart Kossuth Rádió halted news output in favour of cultural programming. The move follows the dismissal last Friday of András Koltay, the former chair of the Media Council, a body created under Orbán’s 2011 media law that critics said was used to exert political control over public broadcasters.
Magyar hailed the suspension as “a historic day” on social media, writing that “propaganda no longer broadcasts from public media.” The new interim leadership, appointed on Tuesday, includes Zsófia Mészáros as head of online news, Balázs Bodacz for television news, and György Kerényi for Hungarian Radio. A new media law is expected to be adopted this autumn to enshrine the reforms.
The abrupt shift comes after sixteen years during which state outlets functioned as government mouthpieces, routinely excluding opposition voices. Péter Magyar’s party, Tisza, was not invited onto M1 during the April campaign despite polling strongly, a pattern of exclusion the new government now describes as institutionalised propaganda.
Across Europe, the Hungarian announcement resonated as a symbolic break with a past era. In Budapest, writer György Dragomán posted on social media that he had long suspected he was blacklisted by public television, recalling repeated interview cancellations that he now believes were orchestrated to keep him off air. “I hope one day we find out who created and ran those blacklists and who was responsible for excluding so many people,” he wrote.
The transformation of Hungarian public media coincides with broader regional debates over press freedom. In Austria, cultural figures launched a campaign to purchase Villa Europa in Salzburg, the former home of writer Stefan Zweig, after its owner Wolfgang Porsche, heir to the Porsche automotive empire, put it on the market following a public outcry over plans to build a 500-metre private tunnel for his car collection. The villa, where Zweig wrote much of his work and hosted figures such as Thomas Mann and James Joyce, was bought in 2020 for €8.4 million and is now listed for €12.7 million. Salzburg University rector Bernhard Fügenschuh said Austria had a “moral obligation” to preserve the site as a place of remembrance, calling it “the most visible symbol” of the country’s historical responsibility.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament is preparing to vote on a resolution addressing sexual violence committed against women and girls during Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Greek MEP Eleonora Meleti told colleagues on Tuesday that she had promised survivors that “someone will finally take care of these open wounds,” urging MEPs to support her report ahead of Thursday’s vote.
In parallel, France is grappling with the aftermath of June’s record-breaking heatwave, which the national health agency estimates caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths. As a new heatwave builds across Europe, the World Health Organization warned of “more deadly weeks” ahead, with 67 French departments placed on orange alert for extreme temperatures on Wednesday. Firefighters reported improved conditions in the Pyrénées-Orientales, where blazes have scorched nearly 5,000 hectares, though authorities cautioned that the situation remained volatile.
Against this backdrop, Hungary’s public media apology stands as a singular moment of reckoning, signalling not only a domestic rupture with the past but also a potential turning point for press freedom in Central Europe.
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