Part I — Situation overview

In the summer of 2026 something happened in the operation of the Hungarian public media within a few hours that no one had expected for years: on Tuesday afternoon, 7 July 2026, the news service of the M1 public-service television stopped, and the presenter apologised on air for the earlier lying. The broadcast of Kossuth Rádió was also interrupted, its place temporarily taken by Bartók Rádió. According to 444.hu’s report, one of the reporters, Császár Attila, was escorted out of the building of MTVA — the Media Services Support and Asset Management Fund, which finances the public-service broadcasters and manages their assets — by two security guards. At the same time the interim leadership of the public media dismissed several presenters and senior executives: according to Telex’s report, among those dismissed are Csete Beáta and Kakuk L. Tamás — who made the post-election Magyar Péter interviews — as well as Kárász Róbert, content-development director of the Duna Media Service Provider, and the overwhelming majority of M1’s news readers.

The turn immediately took on two readings straining against each other. According to the new, interim director-general, Horváth P. András, those leaders and staff who “openly served the political aims of the Orbán government” are being dismissed first; a decision on the partial restart of the television news service will be taken within a week. Against this, Magyar Nemzet put the manner of the execution at the centre of the news: according to its report, on 7 July 2026 the employment of several dozen — by the paper’s sources some 50–60 — MTVA workers was suspended without justification, which labour lawyers assessed as an unusual, unprecedented step, and according to the trade unions the workers were not informed of the collective redundancy that has to be reported to the capital-city government office as prescribed by law. These headcount figures are for now press reports, to be treated with source criticism; the shutdown of the news service and the named dismissals, by contrast, are facts confirmed by the public media’s own broadcast and by the reports of several independent newsrooms.

By MIAK’s reading, the real stake is not whether the turn is deserved — the correction of the public media’s years of one-sided information is a legitimate public aim — but by what method the restoration of credibility takes place. The shutdown of the news service of an institution maintained from public money, from one day to the next, on a one-person order, and the suspension without justification of the staff, repeats precisely the guarantee-less, hand-steered logic that MIAK considers the main problem of recent years. The question, then, is not emotional but institutional: how does party propaganda become party-neutral public service without another narrow circle taking over the microphone in the meantime.

Part II — Literature foundation

Before turning to MIAK’s concrete proposals, it is worth fixing the literary frame in which the relationship of media control and personnel change can be interpreted. The propaganda model of Herman and Chomsky’s work Manufacturing Consent (1988) — the theory according to which the large media systematically serve the interests of their owners and financiers — claims that control of the media line is realised rarely by crude intervention, and much more by the selection of “correctly minded” staff and by built-in self-censorship; it follows that replacing the personnel in itself also switches the media line — which is why it is critical who, and by what rule, decides on the dismissals. According to Guriev and Treisman’s work Spin Dictators, the modern authoritarian leader does not seek the total, censorship-based control of public communication, as the old dictators did, but uses the media as a key instrument of “informational autocracy” — a system that governs by manipulation, not open repression — often on a pseudo-technical pretext (the Hungarian example is the frequency loss of Klubrádió and Tilos Rádió). Bernays’s classic Propaganda (1928) describes organised persuasion through the mass media as the instrument of an “invisible government” shaping public opinion — the pattern of media power as an independent, accountability-free influence. The detailed literature treatment — by author, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures which would restore the public media’s credibility with institutional guarantees — not with the opposite-sign repetition of the old propaganda, but with a lasting, party-neutral structure.

3.1 An independent board of trustees and a party-neutral appointment order (within 30–90 days)

The most important principle is that the running of the public media should not stand under the hand-steering of a single, government-appointed director-general, but should be overseen by a plural body distant from the parties. In the spirit of the A7 media pluralism as an institutional guarantee programme point, MIAK proposes that the members of the board of trustees be elected by a two-thirds parliamentary majority, with the participation of several nominating actors (opposition, professional organisations, the journalists’ chamber), with fixed conflict-of-interest rules — so that neither political side can gain one-person control. The present interim, one-person leadership is risky precisely because the media line again depends on the decision of one person; in the logic of the Herman–Chomsky propaganda model (see 6.4.1) the question “who decides on the personnel” is itself the question of the media line. The aim is to replace one-person discretion with a rule-based, multi-actor appointment.

3.2 A legality review of the dismissals (immediate)

The renewal of the public media cannot happen by trampling on labour-law guarantees — otherwise the new leadership itself hands the procedural fault into the hands of the old system. MIAK proposes that the legality of the early-July dismissals and suspensions be examined item by item by an impartial forum (a labour review, and if necessary the institutional control under the A6 strengthening of checks and balances programme point): the mass suspension without justification and the failure to fulfil the obligation to report the collective redundancy can, under the law, be challenged later, and a dismissal overturned in court is a political boomerang. The aim is not to avoid accountability, but that the justified personnel change too should happen according to the law — because the rule-of-law standard is not side-dependent. Whoever was openly a leader of the earlier propaganda machinery, their responsibility is a separate question; but the dismissal must rest on a documented, individually tailored justification, not on collective suspicion.

3.3 Transparent financing and a party-neutral editorial code (by the end of 2026)

The third condition of credibility is that the public media’s finances be followable to the forint, and that its editorial operation be regulated by a public, party-neutral code. On the basis of the A1 public-money dashboard and the KU2 media-pluralism monitoring programme points, MIAK proposes that MTVA’s full budget, the production and external commissioning contracts be public in machine-readable form, and that news editing be bound by a code — worked out with the involvement of those concerned — which fixes the mandatory procedures of balance, source attribution and correction. This is the point where the public media can prove that it did not change owner, but function: it serves the community’s information, not one political camp.

These three proposals are bound together by a single principle: the public media becomes credible if it does not matter who sits in the director-general’s chair. The opposite of propaganda is not counter-propaganda, but party-neutral public service protected by guarantees — an institution that not even the next change of government can switch from one day to the next.

Part IV — Expected impacts and risks

Dimension Expected impact Risk
Society Party-neutral public service may restore trust in the public media Restoring trust may take years; the crude personnel change may in the short term rather deepen the division
Public administration The independent board of trustees and the regulated appointment give a lasting, change-of-government-proof structure The one-person interim leadership sets a precedent for future hand-steering
Law The legality review of the dismissals protects the turn from later challenge The suspensions without justification may be overturned in court, and the old actors may build a victim narrative

The main question to weigh is the following: the fast, spectacular personnel change gives symbolic satisfaction and breaks the continuity of the propaganda — but if the guarantees (board of trustees, code, lawful procedure) are not built up in parallel with it, then the turn is not an institutional reform, only a changing of the guard. The proposal works if credibility is protected by rules, not persons; it tips onto the risk side if the media line again stays in the hands of a narrow circle, only with a different sign. Trust in the public media — as one expert assessment also indicated — may take years to be restored; this process is accelerated by the guarantees and slowed by the revenge logic.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (suggested KPIs)

MIAK considers the following suggested performance indicators (KPIs, in English: Key Performance Indicator) worth tracking on a 6–24-month horizon:

  • Governance independence: whether an independent board of trustees, nominated by several actors, decides on the news service, or one-person leadership continues.
  • The legal outcome of the dismissals: how many dismissals were challenged, and of these how many were overturned in court — a high proportion is a sign of unlawful execution.
  • Financing transparency: whether MTVA’s full budget and the production contracts are public and machine-readable.
  • Editorial party-neutrality: whether an editorial code fixing balance exists and is observed — on the basis of an independent media watchdog’s measurement.

These are suggestions, not government decisions — MIAK considers worth tracking what shows on a factual basis whether a truly party-neutral public service is being built, or only the owner of the microphone has changed.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s key message is simple: the correction of the old propaganda is legitimate, but credibility is restored not by a personnel change, but by institutional guarantees. MIAK asks the decision-maker that the public media be run by an independent board of trustees, that the legality of the dismissals be examined by an impartial forum, and that the financing be transparent to the forint — because media maintained from public money belongs to the community, not to one political camp.

The topic moves two MIAK foundational values. Transparency is concerned because the public media can be credible only if its finances and editorial decisions are publicly verifiable — secret financing and hand-steered editing are the root of the loss of trust. And accountability, because the removal of those responsible too is legitimate only in a documented, lawful procedure: MIAK protects the guarantees, not the persons — even if the removed actors were the beneficiaries of the old propaganda machinery.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 Press framing by spectrum

The left-liberal and public-affairs band (Telex, 444.hu, 24.hu, ATV) framed the turn primarily as a process of restoring credibility, but also showed the manner of the execution: Telex put the named dismissals and the one-week restart deadline at the centre, 444.hu the symbolic scenes of the apology and the security-guard escort, and 24.hu, with a media expert (Polyák Gábor), circled precisely the question of whether the personnel change in itself is enough for a truly independent public media — “the renewing public media can help fill the credibility gap”, but only if it does not stop at persons. The pro-government-conservative band (Magyar Nemzet, Mandiner), by contrast, ran the frame of the legal violation and legal uncertainty: Magyar Nemzet highlighted the mass suspension without justification and the failure to report the collective redundancy as an “unusual measure”, and Mandiner the international press echo. In the name of ideology-freeness it should be recorded: both frames contain truth — the correction of the propaganda is a justified aim, while the legality of the execution is a real, side-independent standard.

6.2 Facts and data

Indicator Value Source
Shutdown of the M1 news service 7 July 2026, Tuesday (together with Kossuth Rádió) Telex / 444.hu, 7–8 July 2026
Named dismissals Csete Beáta, Kakuk L. Tamás, Kárász Róbert, most of M1’s news readers Telex, 8 July 2026
Suspended workers (press report) approx. 50–60 people, without justification Magyar Nemzet, 8 July 2026
Interim director-general Horváth P. András Telex / Magyar Nemzet, 8 July 2026
Decision on the restart of the TV news service expected within a week Telex, 8 July 2026

The direction of the figures is unambiguous: the turn is fast and wide-ranging, but its legal framing is contested — alongside the named, documentable dismissals, it is the large-volume suspension without justification that carries the greatest legality risk.

6.3 Policy aspects

  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — media pluralism as an institutional guarantee (A7), checks and balances (A6) and disinformation resilience (A13) are the gravitational centre of the topic; media control is for MIAK a democratic-institutional, not a cultural question;
  • Culture (programme points) — the public monitoring of media-ownership and advertising concentration (KU2) and the media-literacy programme (KU7) connect to the cultural mission of the public-service media;
  • Digitalisation and AI regulation (background material) — the source transparency of the public media’s news content and protection against manipulated content is a resilience question of the digital media space.

6.4 Literature in detail

According to the propaganda model, the large media systematically inform in favour of the strong interest groups that control and finance them, and they achieve this “usually not by crude intervention, but by the selection of correctly minded staff and by the built-in priorities of editors and journalists”. The key claim of the book is precisely that control of the media line depends not on open censorship, but on the personnel and on self-censorship. The present turn of the Hungarian public media confirms this thesis in reverse: if personnel selection earlier placed the media line alongside one political side, then the restoration of credibility cannot be solved either by a mere opposite-sign personnel change — which is precisely why the selection must be lifted from one-person discretion into a plural, rule-based board-of-trustees order.

📖 Source: Herman–Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent — The Political Economy of the Mass Media

6.4.2 Guriev–Treisman: Spin Dictators

The authors distinguish the old-type dictator, who seeks “the full control of public communication” with open censorship, from the modern “spin dictator”, who uses the media as an instrument of informational autocracy — a system that governs by manipulation, not terror. As a Hungarian example the book brings the frequency loss of the independent radios (Klubrádió, Tilos Rádió), which the power carried out “as if it were not a political matter at all”, but a technical-regulatory question. The case of the Hungarian public media shows, in this frame, that the dismantling of media control too is credible only if it happens not with pseudo-technical or hand-steered instruments, but with open, regulated institutional guarantees — otherwise the new leadership inherits the same manipulative logic it wants to abolish.

📖 Source: Guriev–Treisman: Spin Dictators

6.4.3 Edward Bernays: Propaganda

Bernays regards the organised persuasion of the masses as a natural element of democratic society, and calls those who operate this “invisible mechanism” the “invisible government” that exercises the real power — that is, public opinion shaped through the media is in itself a power factor, which can be exercised without accountability. (Because of MIAK’s source status we give only a paraphrase from the volume.) In the case of the Hungarian public media, this warning is the most important lesson of the turn: the media power shaping public opinion is not enough to take over, it has to be made accountable — with a public board of trustees, transparent financing and an editorial code — otherwise only the owner of the “invisible government” changes.

📖 Source: Edward Bernays: Propaganda

6.5 International comparison

The institutional patterns of the independence of public-service media are well known in Europe: the model of the British BBC or the German ARD/ZDF rests precisely on that multi-actor, government-distant board-of-trustees system and the guaranteed financing, independent of the political cycle, which MIAK proposes. The experience is that the credibility of the public media depends not on which political side appoints the leader, but on how far the appointment and the financing are removed from the one-person control of the government majority of the day. The European Union’s regulation on media freedom (European Media Freedom Act) also codifies this direction: it ties the appointment of the leaders of the public media to a transparent, objective, non-discriminatory procedure. The Hungarian turn will be successful in the European sense if it switches not the sign of the hand-steering, but abolishes the hand-steering itself.

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances
  • A7 — Media pluralism as an institutional guarantee
  • A9 — Spin-dictatorship prevention index
  • A13 — Disinformation resilience
  • A1 — Public-money dashboard (the transparency of the public media’s financing)

Culture

  • KU2 — Media-pluralism monitoring
  • KU7 — Disinformation resilience and media-literacy programme

6.7 Source register

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 9 July 2026 — topic 1):

Knowledge-base references (literature):

  • 📖 Herman–Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent — The Political Economy of the Mass Media
  • 📖 Guriev–Treisman: Spin Dictators
  • 📖 Edward Bernays: Propaganda

Note: in the blog’s visible text the local file path of the books does not appear — only the author and the title. The file path is an internal matter of the generation process, not the reader’s.

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A7, A6)
  • MIAK policy area: Culture (programme points; programme point ID: KU2)
  • MIAK press monitor, 9 July 2026 — topic 1, score: 90/100

Additional public data sources:

  • Reporters Without Borders press-freedom index; the European Union’s regulation on media freedom (European Media Freedom Act)

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