Yesterday we could learn from “Reporters without Borders”, a so-called NGO which is similar to Amnesty International and Transparency International, that ” one of Hungary’s last critical media outlets were taken over by Orban allies”. RwB is also a domestic pet of spin doctor George Soros and yes, Hír TV became pro-government, pro-Orbán on Wednesday after a change of ownership indeed. So the RwB statement was wailing a lot about Orban’s authoritarian regime which suppresses free media and they were describing the horrors how liberal media dominatrix Olga Kálmán was fired in an astonishing single day U-turn, etc. All right, this is no news. Business as usual.
What perhaps still should make news is that these Champions of Media Freedom and Shining Beacon of Truth have simply failed to mention the following:
Hír TV was established in 2002 when Orbán’s first government lost the elections and his Fidesz party was practically left without any media at all in order to convey their political messages. Responding to Fidesz complaints that the public TV channel became absolutely biased towards the left-liberal government’s agenda, Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy answered: “If you need a TV channel then buy one for yourself”.
Hír TV was much ridiculed and then shunned by the left-liberals but it become a leading news channel quite soon. It was undoubtedly pro-Fidesz, pro-Orbán … until “G-Day”, the 6th of February, 2015 when Lajos Simicska, a rich businessman and a former close friend of PM Orbán, the owner of Hír TV, fell out with Orbán and he swore revenge against Orbán. “I’m going to fire every orbanist!”, he cried on that day … and he did so. After a series of resignations and firing lots of employees, Hír TV turned into “free media” from “Orbán’s fascist propaganda tool” practically overnight.
However Simicska gave up his berserk anti-Orbán campaign after Orbán’s third landslide election this April. He has shut down the daily Magyar Nemzet, which he had also turned into an anti-Orbán propaganda tool, that is “free media” in left-liberal parlance, from a right-wing conservative newspaper. Now he has sold Hír TV, too, and the old crew and management have been reinstated by the new owners.
So there wasn’t a single word about this side of the story in the statement made by Reporters Without Borders. Reporters Without Borders should be renamed Rapporteurs Without Borders.