Media Services and Support Trust Fund (Médiaszolgáltatás-támogató és Vagyonkezelő Alap, MTVA) is the umbrella organization of the public service media in Hungary. The organization was created in 2011 in a move by then recently elected Viktor Orban government to centralize all the public media assets into one organization.
Thus, MTVA incorporated Duna Médiaszolgáltató (that operated the public broadcasters Hungarian Radio, Hungarian Television and Duna Television) and Hungarian News Agency (Magyar Távirati Iroda, MTI). With 2,500 employees, MTVA is the largest media company in Hungary, running 14 television and radio channels and a news portal (operated by the company’s news agency MTI).
Media assets
Television: MTV (M1 HD, M2 HD, M3, M4 Sport, M5), Duna TV, Duna World
Radio: MR (Kossuth Rádió, Petőfi Rádió, Bartók Rádió, Nemzetiségi Adások, Parlamenti Adások, Dankó Rádió, M4 Sport)
News agency: Magyar Távirati Iroda (MTI)
News portal: Hirado
State Media Matrix Typology: State-Controlled (SC)
Ownership and governance
Following the victory in the 2010 elections of Fidesz, the party led by the Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the government adopted a series of legal changes that fundamentally transformed the public media in Hungary. A law adopted by Parliament in December 2010 established the Media Services and Support Trust Fund (MTVA), an entity that was made responsible for the operations of Hungary’s four state-run media companies: Hungarian Radio, Hungarian Television, Duna Television and the Hungarian News Agency, all merged into MTVA.
All these institutions have since been supervised by a single board that is managed by the Media Council, the communications and media regulatory authority in Hungary whose five members are all appointed by the governing authority (Fidesz). The chair of the Media Council appoints MTVA’s director general, deputy directors and the four members of the MTVA Board. The chair of the Media Council also has the right to set the salary of all these people and to sack them at any time. According to the Orban government, the new structure of MTVA was aimed at increasing efficiency. However, in reality, this new governing structure gave the government easier access and greater power to control all the country’s public media in one go.
Source of funding and budget
MTVA is majority-funded by the government. The budget allocated by the government to MTVA is substantial for local standards. In 2019, the MTVA’s funding from the state budget was set at HUF 83.2bn (€270m). As a comparison, in the same year, the Hungarian state spent roughly HUF 250bn on higher education in a country where most of the higher education institutions are state-run. In 2022, MTVA operates on a budget of HUF 130bn (€340m) from a state allocation, according to data from the independent news outlet Direkt36.
Editorial independence
Following the adoption of a new law in 2010 that united all public media into MTVA, the Hungarian public broadcast outlet became almost immediately a government voice. As a new management was installed at the helm of the newly created institution, independent journalists were fired and the editorial line was dramatically changed to promote the government. The law, among other things, also provided the Hungarian News Agency (MTI) with the “exclusive right” to produce content for Hungarian Radio, Hungarian Television and Duna Television, which was not the case before 2010 when these institutions had autonomy over their own programming.
Evidence of editorial pressures including bans on various topics including human rights-focused issues abounded in the past decade. It was also reported that editors at MTVA were provided by the government with “lists of sensitive topics” whose coverage had to be carefully planned to be in line with the government’s interests.
Furthermore, based on leaked documents, including email correspondence over the course of four years, an investigation from a local news outlet has shown that the government intervenes on a daily basis, distorting the news according to its own political interests. The investigation also shows the intricacies of the self-censorship system in place at the news agency MTI.
A report issued by a research initiative funded by the EU stated that “in practice, since the public service media system was restructured in 2010, the public media content has been marked by a demonstrable pro-Government bias.”
There is no domestic statute and no independent assessment/oversight mechanism that would validate the independence of MTVA.
October 2023