Hungary state TV apologises for 'lying' after Orbán defeat

Hungary’s state broadcaster has issued an unprecedented on-air apology for "lying" to the public for years, as the country’s new government begins a sweeping overhaul of the media landscape.

On Tuesday, 7 July, the main state-run channel, M1, suspended its regular programming and broadcasted a black screen featuring a stark written message to viewers.

"Public media has no right to lie," the message read. "We apologise for doing this all these years! Currently, the media is being transformed to be independent and reliable in the future. The news service has temporarily suspended its operations."

The channel resumed broadcasting the following day but did not air its scheduled news bulletins.

The dramatic move follows the dismissal of M1's director-general, Zsolt Németh, as part of a wider restructuring of the state broadcaster, MTVA, by the newly formed government.

Hungary's new Prime Minister, Péter Magyar, described the broadcast as a "historic day" for the country.

"Today, propaganda broadcasting on public media platforms was stopped," Mr Magyar wrote on the social media platform X. "They lied at night, they lied during the day, they lied on all frequencies. Now this has ended."

Mr Magyar's centre-right Tisza party won a majority of seats in the parliamentary elections on 12 April, ending 16 years of rule by Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party.

During his tenure, Mr Orbán faced persistent international criticism from the European Union and rights groups for consolidating control over Hungary's media, judiciary, and public institutions.

An observation mission from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) concluded that public media had failed to provide a level playing field during the April election campaign.

In its post-election report, the OSCE noted that MTVA's news programmes had shown "overt bias" in favour of Mr Orbán and the ruling party.