The Media Services and Support Trust Fund (Médiaszolgáltatás-támogató és Vagyonkezelő Alap, MTVA) is the main organization responsible for public service media in Hungary. It was established in 2011 by the newly elected government of Viktor Orban to bring together all public media assets under one entity.
MTVA merged Duna Médiaszolgáltató, which managed the public broadcasters Hungarian Radio, Hungarian Television, and Duna Television, with the Hungarian News Agency (Magyar Távirati Iroda, MTI). With 2,500 employees, MTVA is Hungary’s largest media company, overseeing 14 television and radio channels as well as 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
After Fidesz, the party led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, won the 2010 elections, the government made significant legal changes that fundamentally transformed Hungary’s public media. A law passed by Parliament in December 2010 created the Media Services and Support Trust Fund (MTVA), an entity responsible for managing Hungary’s four state-run media companies: Hungarian Radio, Hungarian Television, Duna Television, and the Hungarian News Agency, all of which were merged into MTVA.
All these institutions are now overseen by a single board managed by the Media Council, the communications and media regulatory authority in Hungary. The Media Council consists of five members, all of whom are appointed by the government, which is controlled by Fidesz. The chair of the Media Council is responsible for appointing the director general and deputy directors of MTVA, as well as the four members of the MTVA Board. The chair of the Media Council also has the authority to determine the salaries of these individuals and to dismiss them at any time.
The Orban government claimed that the new structure of MTVA was intended to improve efficiency. However, this new governance structure gave the government easier access and greater power to control the country’s public media at once.
Source of funding and budget
MTVA is primarily funded by the government and has a substantial budget by local standards. In 2019, MTVA received HUF 83.2bn (€270m) from the state budget. For comparison, the Hungarian state allocated approximately HUF 250bn to higher education in the same year, mostly state-run. In 2022, MTVA operated with a budget of HUF 130bn (€340m) from a state allocation, according to data from the independent news outlet Direkt36.
According to the broadcaster, MTVA received over HUF 100bn (€259m) in 2023 and finished the year with a deficit of HUF 4.6bn (€11.9m). In 2024, the government allocated HUF 142bn (€360m) for MTVA.
Editorial independence
After a new law was implemented in 2010, all public media in Hungary were unified under MTVA. Following this change, the Hungarian public broadcast outlet quickly came to reflect the views of the government. The new management dismissed independent journalists and significantly altered the editorial direction to align with government viewpoints. The law also granted the Hungarian News Agency (MTI) the “exclusive right” to create content for Hungarian Radio, Hungarian Television, and Duna Television, a departure from these institutions’ autonomy over their programming before 2010.
There has been much evidence of editorial pressures, including bans on certain topics, such as human rights-focused issues, in the past decade. Reports stated that editors at MTVA were given “lists of sensitive topics” by the government, and they had to carefully plan the coverage to align with the government’s interests.
Additionally, according to leaked documents, which include email correspondence spanning four years, a local news outlet investigation has revealed that the government routinely intervenes to manipulate the news to align with its political agenda. The investigation also sheds light on the detailed workings of the self-censorship system at the news agency MTI.
A report funded by the EU research initiative stated that public media content has shown a clear pro-government bias since the restructuring of the public service media system in 2010.
There is no domestic statute and no independent assessment/oversight mechanism that would validate MTVA’s editorial independence.
August 2024