The Craziest Lies of Hungarian State-Controlled Media
A few members from /r/hungary subreddit has translated the article The 100 Lies of the FIDESZ Media Empire, originally published by the oppositional news site 444.hu on October 24th, 2018. In this article we collected the craziest lies of the FIDESZ controlled media in a short list. To see the full Top 100 article, click here.
Lie #1: Tens of thousands of migrants are waiting for the results of quota referendum: in case of a beneficial result, they will come to Hungary.
Tens of thousands of migrants are waiting for the results of quota referendum: in case of a beneficial result, they will come to Hungary.
A referendum related to the European Union’s migrant relocation plans was held in Hungary in October 2016. An overwhelming majority of voters have rejected the EU’s migrant quotas but due to the low voter turnout, the referendum was considered invalid. The M1 public service broadcaster had a whole day of coverage on the migrants wanting to settle in Hungary in case of a failed referendum.
Lie #2: Soros would have killed his own mother
George Soros has written extensively on reforming the US healthcare system and legalizing euthanasia in his Open Society Foundation study. Based on his personal experience with his suffering mother, he wrote about an institution where euthanasia was an option for his mother. He offered his mother his help with euthanasia: “I owed this to her” — he said, but he would have done it very reluctantly. It turned out he was glad that his mother has chosen to live and could spend her last days with him and her family. TV2’s Tények (a 6:30 pm main news show) did not share these details, the only thing they announced was that Soros would have killed his own mother.
Lie #4 The Európa 2017 Campaign
During the upcoming weeks of the 2016 election, TV2 and Origo, along with various other small Facebook pages and Youtube channels had an intense anti-migration campaign. A series of short videos were released every day, with the titles: EUROPE 2017 — IS THIS WHAT WE WANT? where recordings of young black people beating up an old lady were shown. With the original videos muted, sounds of explosions and sounds of people screaming “Allahu Akbar” were added to the recordings. Turns out, many of them were not even related to Islamism or to actual migrants. They had one video from a 2015 Nebraska incident, where people assaulted a woman in a church.
Before the elections, Origo had 394 articles related to migration in a dehumanizing and demonizing view. All of these articles were written by unnamed authors.
Lie #8: Essen (in German: to eat) would rename itself to Fasten (as in “to fast”) due to Ramadan
The Hungarian public service media has fallen for a German comedy news sites joke. They claimed that Germany is going through an Islamization, with the latest milestone of Essen renaming itself to Fasten due to the Muslim holiday of Ramadan — a time of fasting in Muslim tradition.
Lie #10: Two thousand mercenaries of George Soros work in Hungary
Transcript: The fund is being used for the manipulation of Hungarian politics, which means that he [Soros] has lots of problems with the Hungarian Prime Minister.
Yes, that’s strange because…
He is Hungarian, isn’t he?
Yes, he is of Hungarian descent and has funded a university in Budapest and most probably to this day he has donated millions of dollars [to the university].
Probably this was done through various other charities.
More or less about two thousand people work in these charities.
(Source: TV2)
Both the Figyelo (a conservative Hungarian Christian business magazine) and Viktor Orban have been speaking about how more than two thousand followers of George Soros is working on undermining Hungary. Magyar Idok (newspaper associated with the government) tried to prove this with a manipulated voice recording (transcript shown on the image) that was cut and pieced together. However in the full recording what an employee of the Soros-fund really says is that they have two thousand people working for them worldwide, which was never a secret, to begin with.,
Hey! Thanks for scrolling this far! There is more below. The aim of this small community project is to shed light on the current poor state of Hungarian free press and raise awareness among the European public not just on the lack of reasonable reporting from the FIDESZ connected media products — including the public service media, but to show how inflammatory language, conspiracy theories, attacks against oppositional politicians, civil organizations, NGOs and civil activists dominate the news and become widespread in Hungary. Millions of Hungarians are watching and reading articles like these each and every day. These are not exceptions, these are the trend now.
Lie #12: Gabor Vona is chosen as an honorary member of the Grey Wolves terrorist group and declares faith in Allah
Lead: Gabor Vona, leader of Jobbik, in front of Muslim youth declares faith in Allah — found out from a video by Mandiner. Previously Vona has called Islam as the “last beacon of hope for Europe”. Furthermore, he also said he would not oppose the building of Mosques in Hungary.
People from Fidesz has prank-called people with the news (that Vona believes in Allah), and of course later they were called out on this as Gabor Vona — whom the Fidesz troll-machinery calls ‘homo’ and Muslim at the same time — has not talked with Islam radicals, and just like Fidesz, has also been against immigration all along.
ie #16: 16. Due to the political correctness, Kinder chocolate had a photo of a black child on its cover
In August, Origo’s headline was “Newest PC action: the new face of Kinder chocolate is a black child.” They wrote that “an interesting thing happened in Germany when on the shelves an image of a black boy as the new face of Kinder chocolate appeared. According to Kinder’s website, this was only a limited edition series for the Football World Cup. Nevertheless, it seems like even the Germans try to conform to multiculturalism, in times like these.” Of course, the article forgot to mention that this edition was made especially for the World Cup, with images of select football players and the boy on the photo is Jerome Boateng a respected member of German National Team. In 2016 for the Europa League, Kinder has done the same.
Lie #20 Those who do not vote for Fidesz, vote to not have Christmas ever again
This was Viktor Orbán’s Christmas message that was shown all over state media.
Lie #21 Bence Tordai has been downvoted by his students, they consider him a bad teacher.
The Origo wrote in July that Bence Tordai, parliamentary representative of “Párbeszéd” has been downvoted by his students on a teacher rating site (on “MarkMyProfessor” Bence Tordai has 2 profiles now, one of them he has a bad rating of 2.46 and a rather good 3.96 on the other, he was a teacher at BFK, which today is the Budapest Metropolitan University) . But the interesting thing is that the downvotes came around the time this article was written and at that point in time Tordai hasn’t been teaching for 3 years.
Lie #24: Migrant pissing in the metro is shocking Paris
Origo has shown a passenger in the New York metro in 2015 as a migrant in Paris. The article hasn’t been fixed or corrected ever since.
Lie #25: Márton Gulyás has called the “Soros storm squad”: they want to wreak havoc in Pest
“We can expect a wave right-wing violence from Soros in Budapest” — wrote Origo, foreshadowing that after the election, along with the opposition candidates the protesters will burn down the city. But the entire servant media — eg. Lőrinc Mészáros’s regional papers — said that Márton Gulyás(a civil activist), Soros’s governor in Hungary has called an anarchist from Hamburg (the Soros stormtrooper squad). Of course, nothing special has happened during the protests, even though the “Magyar Idők” (Hungarian Times) promised that Sorosists from Hamburg will bring weapons and Molotov cocktails. Origo later corrected the following way: “The organizers, by the way, got scared from the nationwide outcry and Soros’s little soldier, Márton Gulyás was forced to cancel the “rent-a-protester”. Scandal happened nonetheless — according to the media, where they showed that somebody puked on Oktogon (a square) as evidence.
Lie #33: A Hungarian woman born in Sweden is moving to Hungary because of the refugees in Sweden
In the public service media, a woman who was given the name Natalie Contessa af Sandberg, a Swedish woman of Hungarian descent has stated that she fears the refugees so much that she is moving to Hungary. It turned out, that she only rented a house in Budapest a few years before, so the core of the story was a lie. Furthermore, she moved to Sweden with her mother when she was 8 — as an actual refugee. By the way, the woman was convicted with fraudulence back in Sweden.
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Please consider sharing this article with your friends to raise awareness.
If you are a voter or supporter of the European People’s Party (which despite controversies like these upholds the FIDESZ membership of the party) please consider writing to your local representative in the European Parliament, call attention to the wrongful use of the FIDESZ’s media empire to spread propaganda not seen since the communist era’s darkest days. The list and the contact of representatives can be viewed here.
Please consider supporting your local civil organizations fighting for keeping the press free. If you don’t know any, consider supporting one of these on the list.
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Lie #35: George Soros would bring immigrants to Hungary from March
Mayor Károly Szita (FIDESZ) has said in the public service media that the first two “Soros immigration organizer offices” will be opened in Debrecen and Pécs, and these offices’ task will be to “create a support network”. The reality is that the Open Society Foundation has worked together with the NGOs of Pécs and Debrecen to submit applications about improving housing, education, healthcare in impoverished areas in the respective regions. The reason they worked together was to assess the biggest factors of poverty and make effective applications for certain tenders that would help in improving the conditions of poor people. There wasn’t a single word about bringing immigrants into the country.
Lie #40: According to the German press, it’s clear that immigrants were behind the Münster vehicle attack
On the day before the elections, the public service media was blaming the vehicle attack on immigrants all day long and blared without providing any source that according to the German press it was clearly committed by immigrants. They kept pushing the story even after the perpetrator turned out to be not an immigrant but a mentally ill German, the 48 years old Jens Alexander Rüther.
43. There is a Muslim symbol in Jobbik’s logo
The red crescent is not a symbol of Islam, the crescent in Turkey’s flag is white and has a star as well. Acc
According to Jobbik’s webpage: “Jobbik’s crest is a stylized sailboat, with a mast being of a double cross and the sail itself having our national colors. It means that our historical traditions give the foundation (the mast), upon which our communities (families, organizations, municipalities, churches and the nation itself) must build themselves together.”
There is also a crescent in the Székely flag.
Lie #46: A migrant attacked a police dog in Paris
“In the dodgiest neighborhood of the city — Sein-Saint-Denis — located in north-western Paris, a migrant attacked a police dog.” — says the commentary published with the video below. The truth is that the video was recorded in 2017 in New Zealand and the attacker is not at all a migrant.
This is an extrect with only the craziest lies. To see the full Top 100 Lies article, click here.
Lie #57: Fidesz’s 23% support > 38% undecided
A classic case of lying with the statistics has appeared in Lokál, a free newspaper distributed in every public transport. With the title “FIDESZ is winning since 10 years” the orange part of the pie representing FIDESZ is visually bigger than the 38% share of undecided voters.
All credit goes to the journalists of 444.hu for writing this article. This is an English translation done by the community of /r/hungary for the sake of international awareness.
Lie #58: 235 is actually four time bigger than 129
Another case of lying with the statistics has appeared in public service TV, where 235 was the number of people trying to cross the border in comparison with the previous days in the last month. The problem was that on the previous day week 129 people have tried to cross, but the column chart gave the false impression of a spike in the number of immigrants.
Lie #59: 2,5 < 2,4 < 3,0 < 2,8 < 2,3 < 3,1 < 2,7 < 2,1
A so called expert on economy has been a guest of the public service TV, where he reported on the GDP growth predictions done by the IMF, the EC, the OECD and the Hungarian government. The graphs are a mess, they don’t even make sense from the propaganda perspective, but the conclusion on the TV show was that all these international organizations are satisfied with the Hungarian economy.
Lie #72: The ticket sales of the mini-railway of Felcsút are improving in the long term, according to experts, which shows that it’s a good investment in the long term
TV2’s News have made the enthusiastic segment about the mini-railway of Felcsút, which operates at loss. The mini-railway, according to data from August, has generated an 8.2 million HUF deficit, which is exactly twice as much as it did in the first 14 months of its operation. In the May and June of 2018, the trains run without passengers for 10 days. But despite the losses, the government didn’t give up on its plan to extend the railway to Bicske (Hungarian town 5 miles/8.4 kilometer from Felcsút) with additional funding of 600 million HUF provided from the EU’s aid.
Lie #76: Soros’s goons are forcing migrants towards the Hungarian border by beatings
Forget about how suspicious the migrant-protest was in Belgrade, on the exact dayy of the national vote on the EU’s quota system. The statement of Magyar Idők, according to which Soros’s men are forcing migrants towards the Hungarian border by beating them, is an outright lie triumphing all the others. The Serbian Blic, which has been cited as the source by Magyar Idők, has written that on the day of the protests a couple of migrants have gotten into an argument with each other, which turned into a fight. The so called “goons of Soros” had nothing to do with it.
Lie #80: To uphold order, signs prohibiting football were placed in Saint Petersburg
It was pure stupidity by Magyar Idők, but they never actually admitted it, or published a correction.
Lie #83: The CEU serves as the training ground for the “shadow powers” working behind the scene in Europe
Nothing to add here.
Lie #84: The BBC mapped the network of the “Shadow Powers”
The joke by the BBC has been presented as serious by both Figyelő and Magyar Idők. They still have not published a correction. Source: Magyar Idők
Lie #85: There were 2500 fans attending to the closed-door Ujpest-Vasas football match
As part of the media campaign to give credibility to the stadium building spree in Hungary, the FIDESZ media empire constantly lies about the viewership of the matches. They made a mistake in this scenario as the Ujpest-Vasas match had to be played behind closed doors due to the misbehavior of the ultras in previous matches.
Lie #94: Macron doesn’t allow nation-states to defend their sovereignty
Origo wrote in September that Emmanuel Macron, the French president, posted the following on Twitter: “I won’t let nation-states defend their sovereignty”. This perfectly fits the rhetoric of Fidesz, but in reality, Macron posted the following: “I will not leave it to nationalists to defend sovereignty”.
The meaning of the two statements are completely different and his real statement doesn’t speak out against nation-states, but the far-right. It’s possible that Bálint Brodics, the article’s author doesn’t really speak English and since it hasn’t been corrected, it’s still a lie.
Lie #97: Macron denies being homosexual
The pro-government media is very enthusiastic to call Macron gay — just like with Gábor Vona (parliament representative, politician of the Jobbik, right-wing political party). When the Daily Mail wrote about Macron not being in a close, personal relationship with his fighter bodyguard, and he joked about the man “not having the codes for the French atom bombs… he never was my lover”, the 888 (pro-gov news website) interpreted it as “Macron denying his homosexuality”. This was never implied, nor the question even.
Lie #98: Despite the protests, a mosque was built in Zugló, with the help of Gergely Karácsony
Gergely Karácsony was “accused” of supporting the making of an Islamic oratorio in Zugló, as a mayor. Karácsony responded saying: “I have nothing to do with this, the local government of Zugló didn’t need any help to let Hungarian citizens practice their religion.” He added that 12 similar religious communities exist in Budapest, the other 11 in Fidesz lead districts. This didn’t bother the young men that showed up in burkas on the event of MSZP and Párbeszéd (left-wing green party).
Lie #99: According to two thirds of Vienna’s population, János Lázár was right
This was written by Origo, stating that “one of the most well-known mass papers of Vienna, the Kleine Zeitung” asked in an online poll if János Lázár (Fidesz parliament representative and minister) is right for being horrified, since Vienna doesn’t have enough sufficiently white people. (Janos Lazar has made a famous video where he criticized Vienna for taking in too many immigrants by saying that the streets are dirty, nobody speaks German, etc.) 69% of the voters answered, yes, nowadays it’s impossible to walk carefree in the city. The non-representative poll had voters not only from Vienna citizens but from anyone, moreover the paper itself is not based there but in Graz and Klagenfurt. What the Origo stated was simply stupid and dishonest.
Lie #100: All the oppositional media (Index, 444, HVG and Magyar Narancs) are fake news sites
Márta Demeter’s (member of LMP, the liberal, left green party) MP’s writing was based on a — as later found out- false information that Orban’s daughter may have traveled home with a private army jet and was widely shared on a M1. The oppositional media have reported on the rumors, with the state-sponsored media calling them all a fake news factory. Based on my what I read there and based on the experiences working as a journalist at multiple of these media, neither Index nor 444 had a single occasion of forging fake news.
Thanks for scrolling through! To see the full Top 100 Lies article, click here. There’s more internal politics shit show there.
Consider helping the cause of free press:
Please consider sharing this article with your friends to raise awareness.
If you are a voter or supporter of the European People’s Party (which despite controversies like these upholds the FIDESZ membership of the party) please consider writing to your local representative in the European Parliament, call attention to the wrongful use of the FIDESZ’s media empire to spread propaganda not seen since the communist era’s darkest days. The list and the contact of representatives can be viewed here.
Please consider supporting your local civil organizations fighting for keeping the press free. If you don’t know any, consider supporting one of these on the list.
Don’t let this happen within your country! Consider supporting your regional or national independent news networks by subscribing or donating to them.
Disclaimer:
All credit goes to the journalists of 444.hu for writing this article. This is an English translation done by the community of /r/hungary for the sake of international awareness. A few modifications and explanations were added for people that don’t know Hungarian politics. The original sarcastic tone of the article were tuned down by the translator, because the international audience would not get the insider jokes. Links are not present. Please see the original artice for those. But most importantly, the content and the principal message remained the same.
This is a shorter list, with only the craziest lies. Read our longer article, the full top 100 list here.
