According to Hungarian Civil Liberties Union project leader, international press misrepresents reality on the ground in Hungary

The international media is somewhat misrepresenting the reality on the ground in Hungary.

The person conducting the interview with Mr Asbóth, whom we were unable to identify, then asked: “So, is it perhaps fair to say that sometimes the international media or the foreign media is perhaps somewhat misrepresenting the reality on the ground in Hungary because they don’t have all of this information?”

“Yes, it happens.”

Readers may recall that in a Skype interview previously quoted by Magyar Nemzet, Andrej Nosko revealed that there is an unfounded and biased campaign against Hungary and Poland, and that uninformed foreign journalists manipulated by NGOs depict a distorted image of Hungary.

According to Mr Nosko, that Hungary and Poland, lumped into a single category, are often criticised for no reason is due to the fact that standards in the international media have fallen to an all-time low. The circumstance that mainstream media outlets now have far fewer foreign correspondents than before who usually report on the affairs of multiple countries leads to intellectual laziness.

“This is why it is possible to criticise Hungary and Poland in the international media easily, without actual arguments,” the former director of the Soros Foundations said.

He said a further problem is that most foreign journalists do not speak Hungarian, and so they are unable to talk to ordinary people in the street and are likewise unable to read the local news. As a result, they rely on secondary sources – mostly, on persons sharing the same political views as themselves – and this leads to distorted reports on the Hungarian government.

Double standards and agitprop

“These secondary sources are rather distorted, including as regards the legitimacy of the Hungarian government,” the former director of OSF said.

According to Mr Nosko, they typically fail to mention that the Hungarian cabinet is, in actual fact, highly popular in large segments of society. “Instead, they report that the government wants to maintain its power by restricting freedom,” he stressed.

Mr Nosko also spoke about the NGO Freedom House whose activities are widely known in Hungary. “When reading like ‘nations in transit’ of Freedom House, their work for the Slovak chapter, and sometimes it’s so irritating to see that instead of the analysis you have essentially agitprop, you know. Essentially, whenever it’s your friends who are in the government, then the country is doing well. If it’s not your friends in the government, then whatever they do is just not good enough,” he said.

If Orbán were voted out, there would be a massive breath of relief in Brussels

“It’s a simple reality: people working in the media are in the vast majority left-liberal. This is due to what we could call ‘selection bias’” said Andrej Nosko, describing the present situation in the international media. In his view, the influence of political parties is clearly traceable, the relationship between the press and left-wing parties is characterised by a kind of “tribal or herd behaviour”. “They all come from the same group, and won’t criticise their own,” he said.

He took the view that if the Hungarian prime minister were a socialist, both the media and the European Union would treat him differently. He mentioned Robert Fico’s premiership in Slovakia and his level of acceptance as an example.

In another Skype interview, Dalibor Rohac, a Slovak researcher who studied the processes of Eastern and Central Europe and the EU as a research associate of the American Enterprise Institute, too, mentioned Robert Fico as an example. He said the government led by Fico which was nominally social democrat was rather corrupt, but Fico was regarded as one of their own given that he belonged to the group of European socialists. This is why Mr Fico never had to encounter the same degree of pushback from Brussels as Viktor Orbán.

In Mr Rohac’s opinion, if Orbán were voted out, and the Hungarian socialists came back, there would be a massive breath of relief in Brussels.

Journalists controlled by NGOs

In yet another Skype interview, former contributor of the news portals 24.hu and Index Mátyás Kálmán, too, spoke about bias.

He said various NGOs manipulate or even bribe journalists reporting about Hungary, and so they tend to misrepresent events taking place in the country.

“There is no way of knowing whether a given journalist received an invitation to a fine hotel, and how much he or she was offered to write the story that they want to hear told in the media,” Mr Kálmán mentioned as an example. “When a journalist is invited to Brussels or Strasbourg to report on specific events, they’re practically instructed where to go and whom to talk to. “If a journalist relies on an NGO for everything, they become entirely independent on that organisation, and that is not a desirable outcome,” the former contributor of 24.hu stressed.

Mr Kálmán specifically mentioned Amnesty International, an organisation financed by George Soros, as an NGO that seeks to control journalists.

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