Part I — Situation overview

Two mutually independent statements were issued on 4 August 2026 by the same organisation. The press office of MTVA — the asset management and service organisation of the public media — announced that a 482-page document had been received by the leaders of the public media appointed in July. The material was compiled by a circle consisting of journalists of MTI, the Hungarian News Agency, calling itself the Pro Domo working group. The document was gathered by correspondents and news editors over more than ten years: the first item dates from 2015, the last from the day before this year’s election. According to the statement, the correspondence, emails and messages show what editorial instructions were directed at the suppression of news, at modifications of content, or at rewriting according to specified aspects. MTVA at the same time also published a fifteen-page selection, and the management of Duna Médiaszolgáltató Zrt. ordered an internal investigation. Among the cases in the collection are the withholding of a report by Transparency International, the prohibition of reviewing the German Die Welt and two international human rights organisations, as well as a letter in which the Prime Minister’s press chief wrote the headline and summary of a news item in advance.

On the same day MTVA withdrew the appointments of Gábor Hajdú and Miklós Borsa as head of the M1 news programme and as presenter respectively, announced a few hours earlier. The withdrawal was preceded by the press reporting after Monday’s announcement that the editor nominated as new editor-in-chief had previously worked at Hír TV and Echo TV, and by the Prime Minister writing just this much in a comment under Telex’s article: ‘I don’t think so…’. The public media’s Tuesday statement justified the decision on the ground that the renewing news service has to restore the trust of society. Political analyst Gábor Török summed up as follows in his reaction given to Telex: if the Prime Minister says who cannot be the head of public television, then that is government television. Fidesz’s press chief turned this same argument back towards the head of government.

By MIAK’s reading the two events are the two sides of the same gap, and the real lesson of the day lies precisely in their coincidence. The 482-page document proves that in the earlier government period the editorial decisions of the public-service news provision were shaped by political considerations. And the appointment-and-withdrawal shows that the mechanism which made this possible has not yet been dismantled. Under the law the Prime Minister has no competence in the personnel decisions of the public media — these fall within the powers of the management of Duna Médiaszolgáltató Zrt. and of MTVA, and of the bodies under media regulation. Precisely for that reason the present case is not an excess of competence in the legal sense; the problem is that not even the absence of competence prevented the effect. Where a public remark becomes a personnel decision within half a day, independence rests not on a rule but on self-restraint — and self-restraint is renegotiable with every change of government.

Part II — Literature foundation

Before turning to MIAK’s proposals it is worth setting out the scholarly frame in which today’s double case can be interpreted. According to the propaganda model of the work Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky (American media researcher, and linguist and social critic respectively), the distortion of media content typically comes about not through crude intervention but through five structural filters: ownership structure, revenue dependence, source dependence, flak pressure, and self-evident ideological presuppositions. The authors separately emphasise that the most important instrument is the selection of ‘right-thinking’ personnel. The 1928 volume Propaganda by Edward L. Bernays (Austrian-American public relations professional, founder of modern PR) gives for this the concept describing the gap between legal and actual power: the ‘invisible government’ derives not from official competence but from the shaping of attention and of the agenda. And the volume Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (economists, leading authors of institutional economics; they received the Nobel memorial prize in economics in 2024) offers the distinction that is the most important for judging today’s situation: the difference between inclusive and extractive institutions does not turn on who sits in the positions but on what rules bind the holder of the position. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

📖 Source: Edward S. Herman – Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent; Edward L. Bernays: Propaganda; Daron Acemoglu – James A. Robinson: Miért buknak el a nemzetek? (Why Nations Fail)

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures. All three are procedural in nature: none of them is about who should lead the public media, but about by what route it should be possible to get there and to be moved from there.

3.1 Public competition procedure for the news-provision leadership posts of the public media (within 90 days)

The common feature of Monday’s appointment and Tuesday’s withdrawal is that neither involved a public procedure: the public knew neither the candidates’ professional programme nor the review criteria, so the decision could be judged solely on the basis of the candidates’ earlier workplaces. MIAK proposes that within ninety days a competition regulation for the leadership positions of the public-service news provision should be produced and made public, fixing at least four elements: the compulsory publicity and minimum deadline of the call for applications, the publication of the professional programme submitted, the composition of the review panel with editorial and external professional members, and the obligation to give reasons both in the case of selection and in the case of rejection. This proposal follows from the KU2 media pluralism monitoring and the A7 institutional guarantee programme points. In Herman and Chomsky’s frame (see 6.4.1) the selection of personnel is the point where structural influence works most effectively — which is why the publicity of the procedure is not a formality but the single most important check.

3.2 A procedural limit on recall and the withdrawal of appointments (by the next media law amendment)

The sharpest element of the present case is not the appointment but the speed of the withdrawal: less than a day passed between the announcement and the withdrawal. An organisation that can withdraw a leadership appointment within a day can do the same just as fast at any other time — and this possibility is in itself enough to make the incumbent leader watch the daily political reactions. MIAK proposes that the next media regulation amendment should fix two limits: the withdrawal of a news-provision leadership appointment should be possible only with written, public reasons and by reference to one of a set of grounds specified in advance, and furthermore the decision on withdrawal should be preceded by the opinion of the review panel. The legal form matters here: the fundamental rules on media services are at statutory level, that is, the amendment is within the competence of Parliament; the Government may submit a proposal, but the content of the guarantees is decided by the legislature. This proposal is the direct application of the A6 checks and balances programme point to the media institution.

3.3 A government code of self-restraint in the personnel matters of the public media (within 30 days)

The first two proposals would regulate the internal procedures of the public media; the third addresses the other side. MIAK asks that within thirty days the Government publish a short code of self-restraint of a few points, fixing that the Prime Minister and the members of the government do not make statements about the concrete personnel decisions of the public media, either in official or in social media form, and do not indicate an expected programme structure or content. The code has no legal binding force — and that is precisely the point: it is not about prohibition but about the absence of competence becoming explicit. For the verifiability of the undertaking a single mechanism suffices: the body under media regulation issues an annual public summary on breaches of the code. The proposal fits the logic of the A9 spin-dictatorship prevention index and the KU7 disinformation resilience programme points.

The three proposals can be strung onto a single principle: institutional independence is protected not by who exercises the influence but by whether it is structurally possible to exercise it. Acemoglu and Robinson’s argument (see 6.4.3) states precisely this: a change of persons is not in itself an institutional change, because the next actor inherits the same possibilities. The ’they did it too’ line of argument — from whichever side it is voiced — is therefore not an institutional answer but an avoidance of the question.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Society On the basis of the public competition and the public professional programme the audience can judge the leadership decision, not just the candidate’s CV The public procedure is slower: in a transitional period the news provision may operate with durably interim leaders
Public administration The procedural limit on withdrawal makes the leadership position predictable, and reduces sensitivity to daily political reactions A strict recall limit also makes genuinely justified, rapid replacement more difficult
Culture and media The code of self-restraint makes clear the boundary of competence which today exists legally but not in practice In the absence of legal binding force, compliance with the code remains a question of political will

The main question to be weighed is stretched between speed and guarantee. In an institution undergoing transformation the management often requires rapid decisions, and the present leadership circle operates on interim appointments; a public competition takes months. MIAK nevertheless proposes the slower route, because the transitional period is precisely the period in which the practices now taking shape become durably fixed. If during the transformation the rapid, procedure-free decision becomes the norm, then later nobody will have an interest in introducing the guarantees.

The proposal tips towards the risk side if the recall limit turns out so strict that it also makes impossible a replacement justified on genuinely professional or ethical grounds. The solution is not the softening of the limit but the precise, pre-fixed enumeration of the grounds: if the law says exhaustively when recall is possible, then in the enumerated cases the decision can remain rapid, and in the cases not enumerated — such as public political displeasure — it cannot be taken. This structure is the same as the one MIAK would apply in the case of other independent institutions — the posts at the state audit office, the prosecution service and the central bank.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (proposed KPIs)

Four performance indicators (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators) are worth tracking in the coming twelve months:

  1. The share of leadership appointments without a competition: of the leadership positions filled within one year in the public-service news provision, how many were made without a public competition — proposed target: zero, with the exception of interim appointments whose duration is at most six months.
  2. The rate of reasoned withdrawals of appointments: how many withdrawals took place with written, public reasons — proposed target: one hundred per cent.
  3. The conclusion and publicity of the internal investigation: whether the investigation launched into the 482-page document has been concluded, and whether a public summary of the findings has appeared — proposed target: conclusion and publication within one year.
  4. The evolution of international media pluralism indicators: the annual change in the media independence and press freedom index values relating to Hungary — proposed target: a measurable improvement in the political independence sub-index.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s key message in a single sentence: the 482-page document is about the past, whereas the appointment-and-withdrawal is about the present — and the two show the same gap, that today no procedure at all seals off the personnel decisions of the public media from political influence. Concretely it asks that within ninety days a public competition regulation be drawn up for the news-provision leadership posts, that the next media regulation amendment fix the reasoning and procedural limits on the withdrawal of appointments, and that the Government publish within thirty days a code of self-restraint for the personnel matters of the public media. The uncovering of the document and the conclusion of the internal investigation are expectations independently of this — but in MIAK’s position the uncovering of the past does not in itself create independence.

Two MIAK foundational values are in play in this matter, and both symmetrically. Accountability, because the documented cases of news manipulation have to have legal and organisational consequences, irrespective of the government period in which they occurred; accountability is not the making public of the evidence but the existence of a procedure that closes the case. And freedom from ideology, because MIAK applies the same yardstick to the earlier and to the present government: a remark by the head of the executive power is influence even if one can agree with the content of the remark — and the yardstick is a yardstick precisely because it judges on the basis of the procedure, not of the outcome.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The liberal-left spectrum treated the two events separately, and this separation is itself a framing. Telex set out the content of the document in a standalone article — from the ban on questions by the Moscow correspondent to the news headline written in advance by the Prime Minister’s press chief — then ran the withdrawal in a separate article, and Gábor Török’s criticism in a third. HVG by contrast linked the two strands already in the headline, describing the indignation inside the editorial staff and the fall of the appointment as one process. 444.hu chose the most unusual framing: in the closing of the article it itself formulated the duality — that two journalists who had taken part in the earlier propaganda did not end up appointed is good; that all this happened at the request of the Prime Minister is bad. This spectrum therefore did not automatically defend the government decision.

The conservative spectrum put the question of competence at the centre, and — independently of political intent — thereby formulated the most precise public-law claim of the day. Mandiner highlighted in its headline the personal role of the Prime Minister in the removal of the leaders of the independent public media, and in a separate article quoted analysts to the effect that it was a mistake on the part of the head of government to comment on the matter. Magyar Nemzet ran the same thing in the form of ‘sacked with one comment’, and in a separate piece placed in a wider pattern that several personnel decisions of the Tisza government had also changed under political and social pressure. This spectrum treated the 482-page document with considerably less weight; the reaction of Fidesz’s press chief, however — which described the government communication requests as professional cooperation, and feared for the public media on account of the prime ministerial comment — appeared on both sides.

The economic and the general-interest spectrum carried the primary factual reporting. Portfolio narrowed its headline to the content of the editorial instructions — the suppression and rewriting of news — 24.hu highlighted the evidential character of the document (the screenshots), and ATV reported the operative fact of the turn. One aspect was missing from every spectrum: not a single paper posed the question of what procedure exists today for filling the leadership posts of the public media, and what rule limits the withdrawal of an appointment.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
The length of the document made public 482 pages MTVA statement, Telex, 4 August 2026
Selection published at the same time 15 pages MTVA statement, Telex, 4 August 2026
The duration of the collection more than 10 years MTVA statement, 444.hu, 4 August 2026
The earliest and latest item 2015 / the day before this year’s election MTVA statement, HVG, 4 August 2026
The working group that carried out the collection Pro Domo (MTI correspondents and news editors) MTVA statement, Telex, 4 August 2026
Ordering of an internal investigation simultaneously with the publication, Duna Médiaszolgáltató Zrt. MTVA statement, 444.hu, 4 August 2026
Documented review ban — German daily April 2018 MTVA selection, Telex, 4 August 2026
Documented review ban — two international human rights organisations from 8 November 2019 MTVA selection, Telex, 4 August 2026
Withheld news item — international corruption report January 2023 MTVA selection, HVG, 4 August 2026
The announcement of the appointment 3 August 2026 (Monday) MTVA statement, Telex, 4 August 2026
The withdrawal of the appointments 4 August 2026 (Tuesday) MTVA statement, 24.hu, 4 August 2026
The planned relaunch of the M1 news programme second half of August 2026 MTVA statement, Telex, 4 August 2026
The start of the transformation of the public media July 2026, with interim management Telex, 4 August 2026
The first publication of the earlier document extracts 2022, an investigative portal MTVA statement, 444.hu, 4 August 2026

A single connection deserves to be highlighted. According to the testimony of the document, earlier influence typically arrived at the editorial office not in the form of a direct instruction but through intermediaries: as requests from press chiefs and spokespersons, or as internal editorial guidance. The structure of the present case is formally different — a public remark, then an organisational decision — but in its operation it is the same: the executive power gives a signal, and the organisation itself carries it out. The difference is publicity: what earlier happened in internal correspondence has now taken place before everyone’s eyes. This is an improvement from the point of view of transparency, but it is not an improvement from the point of view of independence — and confusing the two is the most important trap of the present debate.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Culture (programme points) — the measurement of media pluralism and the editorial independence of public-service news provision (programme point ID: KU2, KU7);
  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — media independence as an institutional guarantee, checks and balances, and the annual measurement of manipulation resistance (programme point ID: A7, A6, A9, A13);
  • Digitalisation and AI regulation (programme points) — the machine traceability of the origin and modification of news content, and open tools for the detection of disinformation (programme point ID: D8, D2).

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Edward S. Herman – Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent

The propaganda model of the volume explains how media content coinciding with elite interests comes about in a system in which there is no formal censorship. The authors describe five filters: ownership concentration and profit orientation, dependence on advertising revenue, dependence on official sources, flak pressure, and ideological presuppositions taken as self-evident. From the point of view of the model the most important finding is that all this is as a rule not realised through direct intervention:

“This is normally not accomplished by crude intervention, but by the selection of right-thinking personnel and by the editors’ and working journalists’ internalisation of priorities and definitions of newsworthiness that conform to the institution’s policy.”

In the present situation of the Hungarian public media this sentence can be read in two directions. Retrospectively it explains why no formal censorship office was needed for the practice recorded in the document to take shape: the editorial instruction and the selection of personnel were together sufficient. Looking forward, however, it also means that the institution will not be independent even if the political sign of the personnel is reversed — the filter is not in the people but in the mechanism of selection. That is why proposal 3.1 is directed precisely at the selection procedure: the public competition and the public professional programme are the only instrument that makes the personnel decision an extractable claim, and thereby contestable.

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

6.4.2 Edward L. Bernays: Propaganda

Bernays’s 1928 volume is the self-justifying foundational text of the modern public relations profession, and is for that very reason especially instructive: the author does not want to conceal the mechanism but describes it approvingly. The opening sentences of the book name a form of power that operates outside the formal institutional system:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

From the point of view of today’s Hungarian case this concept describes precisely the gap discussed in Part I. Under the law the Prime Minister has no competence in the personnel matters of the public media — legally, therefore, there is nothing to hold to account. Bernays’s concept, however, is a reminder that influence derives not from competence but from the direction of attention: a public remark seen by several hundred thousand people creates an environment in which the decision of the formally independent organisation is predictable in advance. MIAK does not derive from this that the head of government may not speak about the media — but that a statement concerning concrete personnel matters is a different category from a media policy position. The code of proposal 3.3 would separate precisely these two categories.

📖 Source: Edward L. Bernays: Propaganda

6.4.3 Daron Acemoglu – James A. Robinson: Miért buknak el a nemzetek? (Why Nations Fail)

The central distinction of the pair of authors runs between inclusive and extractive institutions. By their argument, inclusive economic institutions come into being ‘on the firm foundations forged by inclusive political institutions that distribute power broadly and constrain its arbitrary exercise’, and it is precisely these institutions that make things difficult for those who would usurp power. A recurring thesis of the volume is that a mixture of extractive and inclusive elements is an unstable construction: sooner or later one logic crowds out the other.

The present situation of the public media is a textbook example of this thesis. In the current structure an inclusive element is present at the same time as an extractive one — the voluntary publication of the documents of the earlier operation, which is a genuine and rare step, and the personnel decision which is reversed without procedure, at a single political signal. In Acemoglu and Robinson’s frame this duality does not persist; what will decide the direction is which element is fixed in a rule. The publication of the document was a one-off decision which the next management is not obliged to repeat; the absence of an appointment procedure, by contrast, is a durable structure available to every future management. MIAK’s proposals are therefore all procedural in nature: a one-off good decision cannot be made into an institution, a rule can.

📖 Source: Daron Acemoglu – James A. Robinson: Miért buknak el a nemzetek? (Why Nations Fail)

6.5 International comparison

The appointment procedure for the heads of public-service media in Europe follows two main patterns. One is appointment by a body, in which the candidate is chosen by a body of mixed composition independent of the political majority, and the duration of the appointment deliberately does not coincide with the parliamentary cycle — this model aims to ensure that the appointment is not the decision of a single political majority. The other is the solution emphasising editorial participation, in which the representatives of the editorial staff also vote or exercise a right of veto in the selection of the head of the news provision. The two solutions can be combined, and MIAK’s proposal 3.1 corresponds to this combination: a review panel consisting of external professional and editorial members, with a public competition.

The EU legal framework has in recent years given a separate yardstick for this. European media freedom regulation expressly prescribes that the appointment and removal of the heads of public-service media providers should take place according to a transparent, non-discriminatory and pre-established procedure, and that removal should be reasoned. The present Hungarian case is therefore not merely a domestic political question: the one-day, unreasoned withdrawal of a news-provision leadership appointment is precisely the practice to which EU regulation is trying to give an answer. MIAK’s proposals in this sense do not introduce a new yardstick but ask for the translation of an existing, accepted yardstick into domestic procedures.

Culture

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

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A7 — Media pluralism as an institutional guarantee
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances
  • A9 — Spin-dictatorship prevention index
  • A13 — Disinformation resilience capability

Digitalisation and AI regulation

  • D8 — Disinformation detection AI system
  • D2 — Open data programme

Proposed new programme point: Public competition and recall procedure for the leadership posts of public-service news provision — for the Transparency and anti-corruption policy area, as a supplement to the A7 media pluralism guarantee point.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 5 August 2026 — topic 3):

Knowledge-base references (books):

  • 📖 Edward S. Herman – Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent — The Political Economy of the Mass Media
  • 📖 Edward L. Bernays: Propaganda
  • 📖 Daron Acemoglu – James A. Robinson: Miért buknak el a nemzetek? (Why Nations Fail)

Note: the local file path of the books does NOT appear in the visible text of the blog — 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: Culture (programme points; programme point ID: KU2, KU7)
  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A7, A6, A9)
  • MIAK policy area: Digitalisation and AI regulation (programme points; programme point ID: D8)
  • MIAK press monitor, 5 August 2026 — topic 3, score: 85/100

Additional public data sources:

  • Media Pluralism Monitor (Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom, European University Institute)
  • Reporters Without Borders — press freedom index
  • European Media Freedom Act — implementation milestones
  • European Commission annual rule of law report, media chapter

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