Media Services and Support Trust Fund (MTVA)
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 around 2,500 employees, MTVA remains Hungary’s largest media company, overseeing multiple television and radio channels as well as a news portal operated by 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
Ownership and governance
After Fidesz, the party led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, won the 2010 elections, the government made significant legal changes that fundamentally transformed Hungary’s public media. A law passed in December 2010 created the Media Services and Support Trust Fund (MTVA), an entity responsible for managing Hungary’s formerly separate public broadcasting and news agency entities, including Hungarian Radio, Hungarian Television, Duna TV, and the national news agency MTI.
The institutions in MTVA are overseen by the Media Council, which is part of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH). The Council is the regulatory authority for broadcasting and audiovisual media in Hungary. It is composed of five members elected by the Hungarian Parliament for nine-year terms. Members are nominated by Parliament’s Committee on Cultural Affairs and elected by a two-thirds parliamentary majority. The Media Council’s responsibilities include licensing broadcasters, monitoring compliance with media law, and, crucially, appointing and supervising the leaders of MTVA and Duna Médiaszolgáltató.
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.
The Director of MTVA is Dániel Papp who has served as Director General of MTVA since 2018 and continues in this role as of mid-2025, overseeing Hungary’s public service media system. His tenure has been marked by close alignment with the Orbán government’s media policy, drawing international criticism over editorial independence.
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. A later report (2024) indicated that the MTVA budget was cut to HUF 126.6 billion.
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.
According to an NMHH document, in 2025, the Hungarian Parliament approved a budget of HUF 165.6 billion (€420 million) for MTVA, marking a substantial increase from 2024.
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 broadcaster 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 extensive evidence of editorial pressure over the past decade, including bans on certain topics such as human-rights issues. Reports indicated that editors at MTVA received “lists of sensitive topics” from government officials, requiring coverage to be carefully planned in line with political interests.
Leaked internal documents and email correspondence revealed how government intervention has shaped content production at MTI, exposing the detailed workings of a systemic self-censorship mechanism.
Independent monitoring and EU-funded research have consistently found that Hungarian public media content has shown a clear pro-government bias since the restructuring of 2010.
The situation has not improved in recent years. Human Rights Watch reported in early 2024 that more than 1,600 journalists and media workers have been dismissed from MTVA since 2010 and replaced with politically loyal staff, a process that has entrenched editorial control). In October 2024, thousands protested outside MTVA headquarters demanding an end to what they described as “state media propaganda.”
There is still no domestic statute and no independent oversight mechanism that would guarantee or validate MTVA’s editorial independence.
September 2025