Mar 31, 2026
Ákos Tóth
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has sought to tame Hungary’s independent media outlets through regulatory engineering, financial pressure, and ownership concentration. But he never fully defeated them, and their reporting on the regime’s corruption and abuses of power has helped fuel the opposition’s rise ahead of April’s election.
BUDAPEST – There is now a distinct possibility that Hungary’s main opposition party, Tisza, will defeat Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party in the country’s parliamentary elections on April 12. This has prompted Tisza’s leader, Péter Magyar, to promise that if his party wins, one of its first acts in government will be to suspend the license of the Media Services and Support Trust Fund (MTVA), the state body that finances and oversees public-media assets. Pulling the plug on the pro-Orbán MTVA is long overdue.
