Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Péter Magyar has used a landmark appearance on the country’s state-controlled M1 television network to deliver a scathing critique of the broadcaster. The live interview, conducted in their studios in Budapest, marked the first time in 18 months that Magyar was permitted on the network.
During the broadcast, Magyar labelled the broadcaster a “factory of lies” and vowed to “immediately suspend the false news service that is operating here”. Over the course of a testy exchange with the M1 editor, the Prime Minister-elect detailed personal grievances and broad policy objectives regarding the dismantling of what he described as the propaganda machine under outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party.
For any democracy where the line between state media and government mouthpiece has blurred, Magyar’s moment carries a simple message: captured media doesn’t last forever, and the reckoning, when it comes, can be very public.
Following the broadcast, Magyar wrote in an X post: “After a year and a half, I am back in the ‘public’ television studio. We have just witnessed the last days of a propaganda machine.”
Magyar’s sentiments went viral in a widely shared video of the encounter. It began when Magyar noted that he had not been allowed on the air since September 2024, despite leading the nation’s largest opposition party, Tisza.
While the M1 editor claimed that invitations had been extended via email, Magyar dismissed these assertions, stating that the blockade had persisted until January 2026. He argued that the network’s 16-year history under outgoing Orbán represented a level of manipulation that “would have Goebbels or the North Korean dictator lick their lips.”
Reporters Without Borders has stated that loyalists to Orbán’s Fidesz party control an estimated 80 percent of the country’s media and that state media have long served as a government mouthpiece for the outgoing prime minister.
Magyar placed heavy emphasis on the personal toll of the network’s coverage, accusing the broadcaster of targeting his private life and family members. During the exchange, he stated, “I have no personal resentment, not even for the fact that you insulted me personally, my family, those close to me, and private citizens here morning, noon, and night.”
When the editor took exception to these claims, Magyar cited specific reports aired by the studio alleging that his underage children refused to speak to him – a lie he claimed since his children live with him and that he took them to “training” just the day prior.
Regarding the future of state media, he pledged that his administration will “create the conditions for an independent, objective, and impartial media,” acknowledging that while “there is no perfect media,” the environment fostered since 2010 when Orbán took office – where “not a single true word was spoken” – is a situation that “certainly cannot continue”.
With a parliamentary supermajority of at least 138 seats and the support of “3.3 million voters”, Magyar noted that the Hungarian people “changed the regime with an unprecedented mandate.” He observed that there have already been “movements” within the network following the election, evidenced by the broadcaster's recent airing of one of his press conferences live “for the first time in a year and a half”.
While Magyar used the M1 broadcast to signal the end of the current system, he later clarified on social media and in a concurrent interview with Kossuth Radio that “every Hungarian deserves a public service media that broadcasts the truth.”
Since winning a historic election on Sunday, Magyar has argued that the country’s state broadcasters should cease news operations until “conditions for objective, impartial reporting” can be ensured. He also proposed a committee comprising “all parliamentary parties and other leaders” to oversee Hungary’s public broadcasters, committing to the presence of opposition politicians on broadcasts that meet “BBC standards”.
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