Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and other press freedom organisations have jointly protested against Viktor Orban’s government after Hungary’s Sovereignty Protection Office (SPO) mounted a public smear campaign against Szabolcs Voros, the co-founder of Valasz Online. On June 10 Mr Voros, who is also RSF’s correspondent in Hungary, published an interview with Ukraine’s President Zelensky in which Zelensky said Viktor Orban was making a historic mistake by adopting an anti-Ukraine policy despite Russia’s full-scale war of aggression and by “betting on good relations with Vladimir Putin”. The next day the SPO published on its website what RSF called a “defamatory pamphlet”. In it, the Sovereignty Protection Office labelled the interview with President Zelensky a “success of the Ukrainian propaganda machine”, and made what RSF says are false allegations about the “foreign funding” of Valasz Online. A Hungarian weekly, Mandiner, also wrongly accused RSF of being “in the pay of the CIA”, according to the Paris-based press freedom organisation. Read RSF’s account of the incident on this link .
Press freedom alert calls on Hungary to “cease its smear campaign”:
On 25 June the International Press Institute, together with the AEJ, Article 19, EFJ/IFJ and RSF, published this press freedom alert on the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Safety of Journalists. The organisations sponsoring the alert said Hungary’s SPO had abused its mandate by stigmatising journalists and NGOs critical of the government. It recalled that the European Commission has opened infringement proceedings against Hungary over the Protection of National Sovereignty Act and the establishment of the SPO, in breach of EU law.
The published alert on the Safety of Journalists Platform calls on Hungary to remove the offensive smearing publication from the website of the SPO; and to call a halt to the habitual smear campaigns by the SPO and government ministers and officials against critical media and journalists.
By William Horsley
