{"id":9827,"date":"2022-03-07T14:57:54","date_gmt":"2022-03-07T13:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/?p=7618"},"modified":"2022-03-07T14:57:54","modified_gmt":"2022-03-07T13:57:54","slug":"ne-ird-meg-semmilyen-formaban-koszi-igy-hallgatja-el-a-kormanynak-kinos-hireket-az-allami-hirugynokseg-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/ne-ird-meg-semmilyen-formaban-koszi-igy-hallgatja-el-a-kormanynak-kinos-hireket-az-allami-hirugynokseg-2\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Ne \u00edrd meg semmilyen form\u00e1ban, k\u00f6szi&#8221; \u2013 \u00cdgy hallgatja el a korm\u00e1nynak k\u00ednos h\u00edreket az \u00e1llami h\u00edr\u00fcgyn\u00f6ks\u00e9g"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Direkt36 has received a collection of documents showing that for years, one of the most important units of the public news service, the Hungarian Telegraph Office (MTI) has been clearly serving the government\u2019s political interests by manipulating or withholding important news. The documents contain extensive collections of internal emails and news articles that have never been published.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/kiszivargott-iratok-mutatjak-hogyan-diktalnak-orbanek-a-nemzeti-hirugynoksegnek\/\">In our previous article<\/a>, we showed how the various ministries and the prime minister\u2019s communications team dictate to MTI. The collection also shows that any &#8211; even remotely &#8211; politically sensitive content is tightly controlled by public media management and its presentation is shaped based on the government\u2019s current position.<\/p>\n<div class=\"felhivas\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/en\/tamogass-minket\/\">Help us tell the truth in Hungary! Become a supporter now<\/a><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<p>Journalists are to consult about certain topics, while other topics are off limits. Many news pieces are simply thrown out \u2013 or as they say at MTI: \u201cit bled out\u201d or \u201cit fell\u201d. There is virtually no room for editorial or journalistic freedom.<\/p>\n<p>The management of MTI is exercising strong self-censorship despite the fact that their news service is used by almost the entire Hungarian media, and their task should be to provide accurate, impartial and multi-faceted information to all Hungarians. According to the Code of Civil Service, the public media is \u201cto present individual dissenting opinions, to provide a platform for debating issues which are present in the community, and to contribute to the free forming of opinions based on reliable information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, the documents in possession of Direkt36, show that<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>in the past few years, some of the news related to the Covid pandemic were censored and manipulated<\/li>\n<li>information questioning the effectiveness of the Russian and Chinese vaccines could not be published<\/li>\n<li>news about Putin being quarantined or the loan Hungary took for building the Paks 2 nuclear plant have been filtered<\/li>\n<li>coordinating with the top management of MTI on news related to the rule of law debate, the child protection law, migration, or churches has been mandatory<\/li>\n<li>it is forbidden to review foreign press articles critical of the Hungarian government<\/li>\n<li>writing about the deteriorating condition of the freedom of press in Hungary, as well as about human rights organizations is out of question<\/li>\n<li>Using the expression \u201cfar right\u201d was not allowed, and instead of referring to \u201cthe unified opposition\u201d, the term \u201cthe left\u201d is to be used<\/li>\n<li>when Donald Trump lost the elections, this could not be published for weeks<\/li>\n<li>the news agency staff were repeatedly and clearly instructed to publish news contrary to professional standards<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Direkt36 sent a set of questions relating to the statements in this article to the public media holding company MTVA, but instead of a detailed reaction, MTVA replied that the publication of internal correspondence is a breach of business secrecy, so they called on Direkt36 not to disclose them, otherwise the public media would seek redress in court.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"kozcim\">&#8220;Hi! This piece fell. No need to pay any attention to it.&#8221;<\/h2>\n<p>The internal documents which were provided for Direkt36 reveal a well-established mechanism for controlling the news and self-censorship at MTI. These documents (all dated after the 2018 elections) show that the key figures within the system are 3 so-called \u201cmanaging editors, responsible for the entire publication\u201d, who work in shifts in an on-call system, as well as the senior executives with whom they are in regular contact: Zsolt N\u00e9meth (referred to as \u201cPitbull\u201d in-house), who is the director of the M1 channel, or for instance Bal\u00e1zs Bende, who is a leading news editor.<\/p>\n<p>The documents and sources familiar with the internal workings of MTI\u2019s system both confirm the modus operandi of the system: before publication, the on-call managing editors show the sensitive materials to N\u00e9meth or Bende \u2013 as they are the ones in contact with the government\u2019s communication team. They sometimes make corrections, or simply decide that a certain piece will not be published, and at times send notes about something that is mandatory to cover. Their decisions are never justified to the journalists.<\/p>\n<p>An early example of banning happened in 2018 when one day after the Hungarian elections, quoting articles from the German conservative newspaper, Die Welt was prohibited. That day, the German newspaper wrote about Fidesz\u2019 latest two-thirds win with the title \u201c The threatening Orbanisation of Europe\u201d. In the afternoon, MTI quoted a few lines from this article as part of its press review. At half past six that evening, the on-call managing editor S\u00e1ndor V\u00e9gh sent a group email saying that articles from Die Welt are not to be included in the press reviews in the future. Later on, the press reviews were stopped entirely:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cUntil further notice, we will not be making any more reviews on \u201cThe foreign Press on Hungary\u201d. Thank you for your work on this in the past! VS\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211; V\u00e9gh wrote in March of 2019, but did not give a reason for this decision. The archives of MTI show that in the years before this, MTI used to publish such a review every three to four days, but since then, none have been done.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_7615\" style=\"width: 1225px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7615\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7615\" src=\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/K\u00fclf\u00f6ldi-sajt\u00f3-nem-csin\u00e1lunk-screenhot.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1215\" height=\"593\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7615\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Direkt36<\/p><\/div>\n<p>This decision is just one of many which blacklisted certain topics or threw already finished reports in the trash without publication.<\/p>\n<p>Such is \u2013 for example \u2013 the condition of the freedom of press. In April 2018, V\u00e9gh informed the foreign policy department that Reporters Without Borders, an international NGO fighting for the freedom of press would be publishing its annual \u201cWorld Press Freedom Index\u201d the following day. \u201cWe will not be covering this. Greetings, VS\u201d \u2013 he wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Although an MTI staff member wrote a piece on them, two other press freedom rankings of the same organisation in 2021 were also not allowed to be published \u2013 both of which featured Hungary and Viktor Orb\u00e1n himself in a bad light. \u201cPlease, don\u2019t write about this at all! Thanks!\u201d \u2013 this was the message an MTI staff member received from S\u00e1ndor R\u00e1thy, the on-call managing editor.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7614\" style=\"width: 1224px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7614\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7614\" src=\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/HRW-\u00e9s-AI-utas\u00edt\u00e1s-screenshot.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1214\" height=\"383\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7614\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Direkt36<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The leaders also did not like reports about the activities of NGOs. One example is from November 2019, when the on-call managing editor sent a group email that read: \u201cBal\u00e1zs Bende informed me that we are not to publish materials from Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI). Please, proceed accordingly!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the names of HRW and AI appear much less since 2019 in MTI\u2019s archive: while a search for the three years prior to 2019, results in 783 hits, since 2019 until today, we can find only 128 hits.<\/p>\n<p>According to the documents, MTI\u2019s reporting on foreign criticism of the Hungarian government has been very heavily filtered. The adoption of the Hungarian Child Protection Act in 2021, for example, provoked strong criticism in the EU. According to the Hungarian government\u2019s narrative, the law was designed to combat paedophiles and LGBTQ propaganda that threatens children, but its critics see it as homophobic.<\/p>\n<p>MTI&#8217;s staff wrote several reports on this, but none of them were ever published. Such was the fate of the report which quoted Horst Seehofer, the Bavarian conservative politician and former leader of the CSU who said that \u201cOrb\u00e1n had gone too far\u201d and that \u201cthe law is a violation of the core values of the EU\u201d, and as such \u201cwe cannot and will not accept it\u201d. The news article quoting the French State Secretary for European issues was also thrown out. Cl\u00e9ment Beaune had said that he hoped the EU would sanction Hungary, and that the so-called child protection law is a \u201cscandal\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Direkt36 sources familiar with the inner workings of MTI who had asked to remain anonymous said that there was only one way for topics which are considered unpleasant by the government to get into the news stream at MTI: if a government politician reacted to them. On such occasions, only the government representative\u2019s statement was quoted.<\/p>\n<p>There have also been several cases when news embarrassing to Viktor Orb\u00e1n&#8217;s foreign allies or ideologically close leaders could not be published. For example, on 26 October 2021 a news piece was thrown out because it reported about a video by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro which was removed from YouTube and his account was suspended because in the video Bolsonaro claimed that people who have received two Covid vaccines are more likely to get HIV. In reference to this, editor S\u00e1ndor V\u00e9gh simply said in a group email: \u201cHi! This piece fell. No need to bother with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"kozcim\">\u201cProfessional? \ud83d\ude00 \ud83d\ude00 \ud83d\ude00 \ud83d\ude00 \ud83d\ude00 :D\u201d<\/h2>\n<p>The tight control of Covid-related news began very early on. This is evidenced by the fact that the first group email from S\u00e1ndor V\u00e9gh arrived to the MTI mailing lists on 4 March 2021 \u2013 which was just a few days after the first confirmed case of Covid in the country: \u201cPlease, forward all coronavirus-related news to the main pipe!\u201d. This means that before they could be published, any news about the pandemic had to be sent to the on-call managing editor for review. Our sources familiar with MTI have confirmed that this rule is still valid today.<\/p>\n<p>The picture emerging from the documents is that the news which might cast a shadow on the government\u2019s management of the pandemic are also stopped by the filtering system. Thus, the government\u2019s efforts to strongly filter the information about their handling of the pandemic and to simply withhold news which are not pleasant for them can be seen very clearly in the way the news agency has covered this issue.<\/p>\n<p>For example, at the end of July 2021, the information that the Delta variant was identified in a soccer fan who had previously visited Hungary was simply thrown out. Shortly before this, a Portugal-France soccer match was held in Budapest, and it was documented that 9 fans were infected there (the number of fans attending soccer matches at the championship was not limited).<\/p>\n<p>These are some of the news not published by MTI:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>that Open Societies Foundation, started by George Soros had donated one million euros to the city of Budapest for fighting the pandemic (the only reason Zsolt N\u00e9meth gave for this was: \u201cNot needed.\u201d),<\/li>\n<li>or that three vaccinated health workers in Russia had been infected with Covid (\u201cThe material about the Russian health workers did not go out, but thanks for working on it\u201d).<\/li>\n<li>In October 2021, the state news agency did not report on the Romanian Covid-patient who died in the ambulance while being transported to Szeged and whose treatment had been taken over by Hungary to ease the pressure on the heavily burdened Romanian medical system. (In spite of this, part of the Hungarian press reported on this, referencing Romanian press sources.)<\/li>\n<li>MTI did not report on the European Medicine Agency launching an ethics investigation into the Sputnik V vaccine<\/li>\n<li>it also failed to publish the news that the experts of the WHO do not trust the Chinese authorities\u2019 data published about Sinopharm.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the above listed cases, the employees of MTI did write up the news, but \u2013 due to decisions of upper management \u2013 these were never published.<\/p>\n<p>There were also examples of domestic data on the coronavirus having to be published without acknowledging the source, which is against the most basic rules of news reporting. A blatant example \u2013 according to our sources \u2013 of this happened in May 2021, when Zsolt N\u00e9meth, the director of channel M1 sent an already written text to Tam\u00e1s Pint\u00e9r who was the on-call managing editor at the time.<\/p>\n<p>The news said that \u201cAccording to information acquired by MTI, the number of those aged between 16-18 years of age who have registered to be vaccinated is more than 84000.\u201d N\u00e9meth did not reference the source of this information, but instead added a \u201cPleeeeaaase!\u201d Pint\u00e9r forwarded the letter to the MTI editor working at the time, who resisted by saying:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThis goes against all professional criteria! What is our source for the numbers of those registered, and since when can a piece of news start like this?\u201d Pint\u00e9r simply responded with: \u201cProfessional? \ud83d\ude00 \ud83d\ude00 \ud83d\ude00 \ud83d\ude00 \ud83d\ude00 D<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2 class=\"kozcim\">Russian-related news have also been filtered<\/h2>\n<p>Among the never-published MTI news, we can also find dozens of those which show that the news agency has also been filtering news relating to Russia.<\/p>\n<p>This is significant in light of Russia\u2019s recent attack on Ukraine, especially because the opposition has strongly criticized the public media service because \u2013 according to them \u2013 it has been reporting on the war in the spirit of Russian propaganda. Even days after the war broke out, MTI was still referring to the events as \u201cthe Russian operation\u201d which is very similar to Russia\u2019s official communication about it: Vladimir Putin referred to the attack done by the Russian troops as a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The Hungarian opposition turned to OSCE and demanded the replacement of the head of MTVA. In response to this, D\u00e1niel Papp and Menyh\u00e9rt Dobos, the leaders of MTVA and Duna M\u00e9diaszolg\u00e1ltat\u00f3 (in other words: the two companies operating the public media services) submitted a complaint with the Media Authority and the National Election Committee claiming that the opposition is attempting \u201cto exercise political influence\u201d, when in their opinion<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cthe only thing determining what is published (and how) in the news of the Hungarian public media services is editorial freedom\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In fact, the package of documents obtained by Direkt36 shows the restriction of editorial freedom at MTI regarding certain news concerning Russia. There were several reports that the European approval of the Sputnik vaccine had stalled, but these could not be published. For example, this happened to the news from May 2021, which was a review of the news published by the German Das Bild. They reported that the German purchase of Sputnik-V got stuck because the Russians had difficulties with transportation and obtaining a European license for the vaccine. Zsolt N\u00e9meth, the on-call managing editor, simply wrote \u201cNot needed.\u201d regarding this material.<\/p>\n<p>Last fall, when \u2013 at a public event \u2013 Putin mentioned that he might need to be quarantined, this was not allowed to be reported. On the next day, however, once the Kreml officially announced this, explaining that a number of those in the president\u2019s circle had tested positive, MTI did publish a brief piece about it.<\/p>\n<p>A number of news reports related to the Paks 2 project and the Russian loan making it possible were not allowed to be published. The Paks 2 project will cost 12,5 billion euros, and Hungary signed a 10 billion-euro loan contract with Russia in 2014 to cover the cost of expanding the already existing plant. The deadline for using this money has been extended to 2030. Since a reason was never provided, it is not clear why reports about the Russian vaccine, Putin\u2019 quarantine, or Paks 2 were withheld.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"kozcim\">Donald Trump can not lose<\/h2>\n<p>Then-US president, Donald Trump\u2019s loss at the November 2020 elections was also a sensitive subject. At the elections held on 3 November, Democratic candidate Joe Biden won 51,3 percent of the votes and the majority of the electoral votes as well, but Donald Trump was reluctant to concede defeat and \u2013 although he was never able to provide proof \u2013 claimed multiple times that the election was stolen via the mail-in votes. The documents provided for Direkt36 show that similarly to the Hungarian government, state media was also unwilling to accept Joe Biden\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n<p>A week after Trump\u2019s defeat (and days after the result had become obvious), leading news editor, Bal\u00e1zs Bende wrote a nervous letter to Tam\u00e1s Pint\u00e9r, the on-call managing editor at MTI who had sent him a report to be checked: it was about French President Emmanuel Macron having called Joe Biden on the phone. Bende\u2019s response was:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cONCE AGAIN I marked the changes with an asterisk that he is not the president-elect, he has not won until there is an official result. It would be great if for once, the editors in your department were doing their job, and I didn\u2019t have to write the same thing over and over again. I don\u2019t think that this should be too hard to comprehend for your department. And I really don\u2019t care who likes this and who doesn\u2019t! Thanks!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In the news report, Biden\u2019s title had to be changed from \u201cpresident-elect\u201d to \u201cthe Democratic party\u2019s presidential candidate\u201d. This is how the following sentence was born: \u201cOn Saturday, the French president had already congratulated the Democratic Party\u2019s candidate Joe Biden on Twitter\u201d \u2013 but the part that said \u201cfor winning the presidential elections\u201d had to be removed.<\/p>\n<p>On the same day there was another similar news piece saying that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had spoken on the phone with Biden. In this case they solved the problem by violating a fundamental rule of news agency work: they left out Joe Biden\u2019s title. It was also a strange solution when they reported that former American president, the Republican George W. Bush congratulated \u201cDemocratic candidate\u201d Joe Biden on his \u201csuccess\u201d at the presidential elections. In this case, since Biden could not be referred to as an \u201celected candidate\u201d, he simply remained a \u201ccandidate\u201d, and since mentioning \u201cvictory\u201d or \u201cwon\u201d were out of the question, they went with \u201cthe success he achieved\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Even later on, Bende insisted that Joe Biden\u2019s victory can not be acknowledged. Accoding to an email written on 15 November, Bende gave directions to throw out a short news piece published by MTI which reported that Donald Trump had acknowledged Joe Biden\u2019s victory for the first time on Twitter (although later on he changed the word \u201cwon\u201d to \u201che only won in the eyes of the fake news press\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>The explanation Bende gave to the on-call managing editor was that \u201cTrump did not acknowledge anything\u201d. He forwarded this message to the journalist working on the piece, who responded by saying \u201cPerhaps we should notify President J\u00e1nos \u00c1der that he was a bit too hasty with congratulating Biden? And we might as well inform all the leading politicians of the world\u2026 :(\u201d The boss\u2019 answer was simple: \u201cI am sure you are not actually asking this. :)\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"kozcim\">The &#8216;united opposition&#8217; doesn\u2019t exist \u2013 there are only &#8216;those on the left&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p>The rules on how political parties were to be referred to also had to be changed based on orders from above. In this case too, the words and adjectives used by MTI had to be completely in sync with government communication. An email from April 2019 attests to the fact that they started completely avoiding the expression \u201cfar-right\u201d when referring to those foreign political parties which Fidesz considers potential allies.<\/p>\n<p>S\u00e1ndor V\u00e9gh asked his colleagues at MTI \u201cto avoid using the expression far-right when referring to parties within Parliament! It can be right-wing or radical, etc instead. Only use \u201cfar-right\u201d when referring to small Nazi groups holding a street demonstration\u201d \u2013 he wrote.<\/p>\n<p>The references to the government\u2019s opposition have also not been too colourful. A group email sent by Tam\u00e1s Pint\u00e9r dated 7 February 2020 states:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThere\u2019s a new ban: when referring to mayors, do not use \u201copposition\u201d or \u201cunited opposition\u201d as an adjective for them. Instead use \u201cleft-wing\u201d. If the person was also supported by right-wing organisations, then we put the organisations which supported them in parentheses, and just refer to them as \u201cmayor so-and-so.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_7613\" style=\"width: 1217px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7613\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7613\" src=\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Ellenz\u00e9ki-helyett-baloldali-\u00faj-tilt\u00e1s-screenshot.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1207\" height=\"258\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7613\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Direkt36<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Writing about the disagreement with the EU relating to matters of rule-of-law is also not possible without limitations at MTI. At the heart of the debate is a new EU procedure that would allow the EU to punish member states which violate the rule of law, even by withdrawing EU funds. The Hungarian and the Polish governments opposed this, and attacked the regulation at the European Court of Justice.<\/p>\n<p>S\u00e1ndor V\u00e9gh was the one who informed the MTI staff about the guidelines by adding: \u201cPlease, pay attention to the post scriptum!\u201d And the text was this: \u201cThe EU will keep bringing up \u201cthe rule of law conditions\u201d in their haggling. These are in fact political conditions: they will give us cash if\u2026so, let\u2019s NOT use this expression please! Instead, simply write \u201csubject to political conditions\u201d Thanks!\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But news about sensitive topics always had to be shown to the leaders before publication anyways. These are referred to as topics which are \u201csubject to consultation\u201d. According to an email from 2019, such was for example \u201cmigration, terror attacks in Europe, Brussels, church-related issues\u201d, but temporarily, certain current events also fell into this category.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>According to a group email sent by Tam\u00e1s Pint\u00e9r in September 2019, \u201cthe Israeli elections have grown to be subject to consultation\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of March 2020, S\u00e1ndor R\u00e9thy informed those working on foreign policy and economic news that \u201creports about financial decisions of the EU must first be seen by the chiefs. (The chiefs are the ones also referred to as \u201cmain pipes\u201d, lead editors or on-call managing editors.)<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"kozcim\">Pro-immigration intergovernmental organisation<\/h2>\n<p>The reporters also did not have it easy when it came to the subject of immigration, especially not during the time when the governing parties\u2019 communication was built on stopping migration.<\/p>\n<p>This is clearly seen in how a tragic piece of news in July 2019 was handled: In the German city of Frankfurt, a man pushed a mother and her young son in front of an arriving train. MTI\u2019s first report bore the title of: \u201cA Swiss father of three pushed a woman and her child in front of an arriving train in Frankfurt\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>However, this title was not popular with the leadership, so the next day S\u00e1ndor R\u00e1thy sent directions in a group email:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cHi! When writing about the German train murder case, please start both the text and the title with stating that the man is from Eritrea and not that he had been living in Switzerland. Later on, it\u2019s okay to mention in the text that he is an Eritrean who had been living in Switzerland, etc. Thanks! S\u00e1ndor.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The next MTI report about the murder case was already worded in line with these directions.<\/p>\n<p>According to the documents sent to Direkt36, several pieces of news about refugees didn\u2019t make it past the filters either. This happened for example to the material from September 2021 entitled \u201cIllegal migration \u2013 relief organizations criticize the conditions in Greek refugee camps\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was also emphasized that the UN\u2019s IOM should always be referred to as \u201can intergovernmental pro-immigration organization\u201d, and all materials about them are to be approved by one of the bosses before publication. Hungary is also a member of this international organization, and as a matter of fact, its statute became part of Hungarian law in 2013, when Viktor Orb\u00e1n was already prime minister.<\/p>\n<p>In spite of all this, according to a group email sent out in the fall of 2020, the following rule was to be applied at the Hungarian national news agency when reporting on this organization: \u201cDear foreign policy desk! Any time you write down the name IOM, the following indicative structure should always follow: The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is an INTERGOVERNMENTAL, PRO-IMMIGRATION ORGANIZATION\u2026.And then in each case this sentence must be added right after: ACCORDING TO THIS ORGANIZATION\u2019S BASIC BELIEF, GLOBAL MIGRATION IS USEFUL BOTH FOR THE MIGRANTS AND FOR SOCIETY AS A WHOLE, SO IT SHOULD NOT BE STOPPED, BUT RATHER MAINTAINED AND MANAGED THROUGH GLOBAL COOPERATION. Thanks!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Credit for cover picture: Szarvas \/ Telex. In the picture we can see Bal\u00e1zs Bende. English translation is the work of Andrea Horv\u00e1th K\u00e1vai.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Documents obtained by Direkt36 show how the government dictates the news at Hungarian state news agency MTI. Self-censorship also plays a crucial role in shaping the content of MTI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":7617,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-telex.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[186,187,207,259],"ppma_author":[558],"class_list":["post-9827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mediapolitika","tag-kozpenz","tag-kozszolgalati-media","tag-magyar-tavirati-iroda","tag-orban-viktor","author-cap-zsuzsi"],"authors":[{"term_id":558,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-zsuzsi","display_name":"Zsuzsi","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","description":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9827"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}