The fall of Viktor Orbán: A bought press initially managed to change the opinion of Hungarians, but the end was different

Since returning to power 16 years ago, one of Viktor Orbán's grand strategies has been to stifle critical media. He succeeded up to a point. Outnumbered and under constant attack, independent journalists continued to do their job, and did it well – evidenced by the revelations that rocked the government and possibly hastened its end.

When Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz government took power in 2010, one of its first targets was the media.

From the first mandate, he redesigned the regulatory system in the mass media and changed the structure of public media institutions, appointing only loyalists in control positions.

Government spokeswoman

The public media, critics charged, had become a government mouthpiece, with attacks on the opposition and the “Soros network”, Brussels and Ukraine depending on the direction of the government.

In the second term, the expansion of control over the press was very relevant, explained the Hungarian observers I talked to in recent years.

We are talking about the closing of Népszabadság, which since 1956 was the most famous and relevant printed newspaper.

The same happened with other news portals. Businessmen close to the government have created new media outlets and purchased existing ones – a relevant case being that of the Index website.

Hundreds of publications in one place

The Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA), established in 2018 and run by people close to Fidesz, acquired many media outlets and eventually brought together 28 companies comprising around 500 publications.

All the local newspapers got into the hands of the people around the government.

Frequently, the same attacks on the opposition, the enemies of Brussels, with identical titles, a dystopian image of the lack of pluralism in the media.

The laws were circumvented

This conglomerate was exempted from competition law, which should have prevented the formation of a monopoly. The government declared the acquisitions of “national strategic importance”.

What remained of the independent press continued to fight for survival, but under increasingly difficult conditions, under financial pressure and under attacks from the state.

In 2021, for example, the authorities revoked the license of Klubrádió, a post critical of the government – ​​sparking protests in Budapest.

In the same years, investigative journalists revealed that around 300 Hungarian citizens, including many journalists, were monitored with Pegasus, a spy software developed by the Israeli company NSO Group. The government denied involvement.

“Our work has made us targets,” journalist Szabolcs Panyi, from Direkt36, one of those targeted, told me at the time.

“95% of media in Hungary controlled or owned by the government”

People from the Hungarian press outlined a dramatic picture of the prime minister's attack on the independent press.

“The government wanted to take over all the media, which, by the way, they succeeded quite well. Because right now, and this is how things are in 2018, I would say that 95% of the media in Hungary is controlled, or owned by the government,” Mihály Hardy, an editor at Klubrádió, told me.

In the campaign, he continued, “the controlled press took over exclusively the government's messages”, which in regard to Ukraine were fully consistent with Moscow's position.

They succeeded in making Moscow sympathetic in Hungary

Four years ago, before another round of elections, Agnes Urban, an expert at the Mertek Media Monitor Institute, was talking to me all about the reception of Moscow's messages and the government's success in shaping public opinion.

“It was hard to imagine before the war that it was possible to disseminate such propaganda. Russia was not popular, for historical reasons. This proves the power of the centralized media system dominated by Fidesz. They were able to change public opinion,” she told me.

Ahead of that election in 2022, United Opposition Leader Peter Marki-Zay was given five minutes on public television on a Wednesday morning.

The independent press refused to die

In any case, during all this time, the independent press did not die. When their site was captured, Index journalists left to build a new site, Telex, which is now one of the most read in Hungary, probably the most important independent site, alongside other major voices such as 444.hu and HVG.

Klubrádió continued to broadcast on the Internet. “Our radio is still very popular with people because we tell the truth, and our estimate is that at least 200,000 people listen daily, either for a short period or maybe from morning to night, Klubrádió,” assured Mihály Hardy.

Moreover, earlier this year the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Hungary had breached EU law when it refused to license the station.

Investigative sites such as Direkt36, Átlátszó or VSquare (where journalists from several neighboring countries collaborate, but also from Hungary) have proved important.

A potentially decisive moment

Freelance journalists continued to do their job and did it well.

In February 2024, 444.hu revealed that Hungarian President Katalin Novák pardoned a man convicted of covering up child sexual abuse in 2023.

Direkt36 continued with new revelations regarding this scandal.

Massive demonstrations against the government followed, and amid growing public anger, Novák announced his resignation live on national television.

On the same day, the minister of justice at the time the pardon was granted, Judit Varga, who had approved the decision, also resigned as leader of the Fidesz candidate list for the European Parliament.

Appearance of Péter Magyar

A little later in the same month, Judit Varga's ex-husband, a Fidesz insider named Péter Magyar, announced his resignation from all public positions and harshly criticized the party, especially the prime minister's chief of staff, Antal Rogán, accusing them of “hiding behind women's skirts”.

Other protests followed, culminating in a massive one on February 16 in Budapest, and amid the public fury, Magyar assumed an informal role as opposition leader, took over a party, Tisza, and soon managed to come second in the European Parliament elections.

Two years later, on Sunday, he won the parliamentary election in a landslide and is set to take over as prime minister.

The press continued to do its job. András Pethő, co-founder of Direkt36, spoke to HotNews before the elections.

Direkt36's investigations and documentaries have been watched by millions of people. The film “The Dynasty”, about the business of the Orbán family, was released by Direkt36 in February 2025 and in one year exceeded 4 million views. This year, the editorial office also released “The Trap”, a new documentary about the Orbán regime, with more than 1.5 million views.

The story of the Samsung factory

An investigation by Telex, staffed by ex-Index journalists, revealed that the government was aware of serious safety violations at a Samsung factory in the city of Göd, but chose to cover them up in order not to scare off investors and suffer politically.

In the campaign, foreign media and Hungarian journalists exposed the close ties between Moscow and Budapest, which helped the Kremlin evade sanctions and passed details of EU meetings to Russia.

Government response: Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi was accused of conducting espionage in coordination with another country.

He, along with colleagues from other countries, had published extensive investigations in VSquare detailing Russian influence operations in Hungary, as well as the relationship between Moscow and Hungary's foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto.

All of them weighed more or less in the defeat of Fidesz on April 12.

“Russians, go home!”

Polls and analysts explained that the deterioration of the economy and public services affected voters the most, and allegations of corruption played an important role, as did democratic slippage, the feeling of suffocation in the face of a system that captured everything.

The media did not bring Orbán down, but gave voters the opportunity to stay informed, to make an informed choice.

How much the revelations about the Budapest-Moscow love affair or about the presence of Russian GRU agents in Hungary ultimately weighed during the campaign is not very clear.

One thing was visible, the enthusiastic chants of Magyar supporters before and after the election: “Russians, go home!”.

“Russians, go home!” it is a well-known and powerful message for Eastern Europe, shouted for generations in the countries where the Red Army had stationed its troops.

What's next

This year, Peter Magyar was not even once on public television.

He arrived only after the elections, at the state radio station Kossuth and then at the public television M2, where he promised to suspend the activity of the public stations, until a new press law is adopted and journalists' freedom is ensured.

Magyar used the moment to denounce some of the claims made over time on state television.

“It also appeared to you, lady editor, that there is no internet in Germany, you also broadcast that in Germany people don't have sex.” “You don't find it unpleasant, Madam Editor?” he asked.

We would be naive to say with relief that attacks on the press stop with the fall of an oppressive government.

In the discussion before the elections, the journalist from Klubrádió explained to me that the change of government will not be enough and that Hungary needs a complete change of the political system, just like it was in 1989-1990.

He insisted that Hungary would need a very long time and a long process to return to normal democratic values, and on the media, he warned that “everything needs to be changed, from the public service to media ownership.”

Any politician will be tempted to suppress critical voices, and the power held will give him the confidence that he has the right and the leverage to do so.

Magyar won a comfortable majority in parliament, has the ability to replace the Fidesz system, and many will now be watching closely to see if he will follow through on his campaign promises.

His political project was closely linked to successful democratic reform and democratic governance in Hungary.

“He must remain a democrat. If he soon moves in authoritarian or illiberal directions, this will have a negative impact on the popular support he enjoys,” Daniel Hegedüs, deputy director of the European Policy Institute, told me before the election.