Hungary’s main public television channel has abruptly halted its news broadcasts as the country’s new administration overhauls state media it says was used to spread propaganda under former prime minister Viktor Orbán.
The M1 channel cut its scheduled programmes on the afternoon of July 7 and replaced them with a black screen. A written message apologised for years of dishonesty and said news output was suspended while the broadcaster was rebuilt into an independent and trustworthy service.
State radio station Kossuth, which usually carries news and current affairs, went off air at the same time. Its frequencies instead played classical music.
The websites of both outlets went down. MTVA, the body that runs Hungary’s public media, said M1 would return in the evening without news, with bulletins reintroduced gradually under a new editorial team.
Media reform was a central pledge of Prime Minister Péter Magyar, whose Tisza party ousted Orbán’s national-conservative Fidesz in April after 16 years in power. Tisza took a two-thirds parliamentary majority on a platform of what it called regime change.
The party sits with the European People’s Party, the centre-right bloc that also includes Spain’s Partido Popular and the family of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Fidesz left the grouping in 2021.
Magyar hailed the suspension on Facebook as a historic day that ended what he described as propaganda broadcasting. The Hungarian Government would build a balanced and objective news service, he said, and had ordered an immediate review of public media and its financing.
Orbán rejected the move, calling it a further example of what he termed Tisza tyranny. His party had denied throughout its rule that it pressured the media, insisting it met European Union standards.
Local outlets reported that several editors had been dismissed as interim managers arrived at the headquarters, with one leading political correspondent escorted from the building, though Reuters said it could not confirm the accounts.
The suddenness mirrored Poland, where Donald Tusk’s pro-European coalition pulled the state news channel TVP Info off air within weeks of taking office in December 2023 and sacked the heads of public television, radio and the state news agency. The ousted Law and Justice party there also branded the takeover unlawful.
Hungary’s media had drawn repeated criticism from the EU and press freedom groups under Orbán. The country fell to 74th this year in the press freedom index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, down from 23rd in 2010.
