Friends of Hungary Foundation is an NGO that claims to promote links between Hungarians abroad. As part of its activities, it runs two news portals, in English and German.
Media assets
News portal: HungaryToday.hu, UngarnHeute.hu
State Media Matrix Typology: Captured Private (CaPr)
Ownership and governance
Friends of Hungary Foundation (Magyarország Barátai Alapítvány in Hungarian) was founded by 13 Hungarian personalities, six of them now deceased. The foundation runs the news portals Hungary Today in English and Ungarn Heute in German via a Hungary-incorporated limited liability company called Friends of Hungary. The foundation also publishes Friends of Hungary, a print magazine that is delivered by post to more than 200 Hungarians living mostly abroad.
Source of funding and budget
The foundation runs its activities thanks to donations received from a slew of companies including state-owned businesses such as the oil and gas company MOL and Gedeon Richter. No direct state funding allocations for the foundation have been identified to date. The foundation does not publish its financial reports.
Editorial independence
According to its own website, Friends of Hungary Foundation was established in 2011 with the aim “to provide value-based, yet non-partisan, information to the community of Hungary’s friends and the general public on events and successes concerning Hungary and Hungarians living around the world.” The Foundation claims to work on “strengthening the ties between Hungarians living in their homeland and in the Diaspora.”
The news portals run by the foundation are overtly supportive of the Hungarian government led by the prime minister Viktor Orban who is a regular guest speaker at their annual conference. Journalists and experts interviewed for this report say that the foundation has strengthened its relationship with Fidesz, Orban’s party, in recent years, turning its publications into propaganda outlets in the service of the Hungarian government.
September 2023