Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Magyar moves to eliminate bias in public broadcasting

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Peter Magyar announced Thursday that his government will temporarily suspend public media broadcasts until he’s satisfied news outlets can produce unbiased coverage.

In a press conference before Hungary’s presidential palace, Mr. Magyar said that, in addition to the pause, his government would pass a law creating a media authority to “set up the professional conditions for state media to actually do what it is meant to do.”

Critics say that public media institutions became a tool for state propaganda under Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government and have called for broader press freedom.

Mr. Magyar’s statement drew an immediate response from nearly 100 journalists from the Hungarian state news agency MTI, saying the “editorial autonomy of the national news agency should be restored.”

Mr. Magyar, who was effectively banned from appearing in MTI even during the campaign, appeared on the network Wednesday to promote his new media agenda.

“This factory of lies will be put to an end after the formation of the Tisza government,” he said. “We will immediately disband this deceitful news service that is going on here. And will create independent, objective and impartial conditions.”

Mr. Orban was defeated in a historic landslide on Sunday by Mr. Magyar’s center-right Tisza Party, securing a two-thirds supermajority, 138 of 199 seats, with 53.6% of the vote. The Fidesz Party, which Mr. Orban has led for nearly 16 years as prime minister, secured just 55 seats.

Mr. Orban conceded defeat the same night, calling the result painful but unambiguous. Hungary’s National Election Office put turnout close to 80%, the highest in post-communist Hungarian history.

The scale of the defeat was all the more striking because Hungary’s electoral system had long been seen as tilted toward Mr. Orban’s party through favorable district boundaries, dominance of much of the media landscape and entrenched rural support.

On top of that, Mr. Orban drew loud support from President Trump, who even sent Vice President J.D. Vance here to rally voters days before the election.

The immediate drivers of Mr. Orban’s defeat were concrete enough: inflation, strained public services, corruption allegations and a growing feeling that Hungary had drifted into isolation within the European Union.

The election also became a referendum on Mr. Orban’s broader political model, one admired by many on the American and European right for its nationalism, hostility to immigration and contempt for liberal cultural politics, yet opposed by many inside Hungary and across Europe for its hollowing out of democratic institutions and its increasingly warm ties with Moscow.

At one polling station, Eva Kocsis, a municipal official working the vote, said she could not remember seeing such crowds. Asked what was driving the turnout, she answered without hesitation: “Anger. People are angry.”

On Saturday night, hundreds of Orban supporters gathered for a final rally at Budapest Castle. The mood, by contrast, seemed subdued. The crowd was modest compared with the large anti-Fidesz concert held the previous evening at Heroes’ Square.

There, Botond, a Budapest resident attending with his girlfriend, said he had enough.

“We can’t take it anymore. The corruption, the lies, selling out our country to Russia. We’re fed up,” he said. A self-described conservative, he said he remained wary of Islam and immigration but believed Mr. Orban’s long rule eroded Hungary’s democratic institutions.