At 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Hungary's public news channel M1 went off air with a black screen displaying an apology for decades of state-sponsored disinformation. The message read: "Public media should not lie. We are sorry for doing it for so long. Public media will now be reformed so they will be independent and trustworthy. Our news service is currently suspended. Stay tuned!" All television and radio news bulletins under the MTVA public media holding were replaced with the same notice. Only MTI, the state news agency's website, continued publishing political updates.
Prime Minister Peter Magyar announced the move as the start of a sweeping overhaul of Hungary's public media, calling it "a historic day" in a Facebook post. "They lied at night, they lied during the day, they lied on every wavelength. That is now over," Magyar said. The leadership of M1 has been removed, including director Zsolt Nemeth, known as "Pitbull" for his combative approach, along with senior programming directors and news editors.
At 7:56 p.m., M1 resumed broadcasting—a time chosen to symbolize the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising. The first program aired was the 1979 Hungarian political satire The Witness, which critiques Stalinist propaganda. The black screen message remains visible on the website of Hirado, M1's flagship news program. This action fulfills a central campaign promise made by Magyar ahead of the April 12 election, after his Tisza party won in a landslide.
Under Viktor Orban's 16-year rule, Hungary's public media became a tool for spreading disinformation, including false narratives about criminal African migrants, a Jewish-American billionaire undermining Hungarian identity, EU-led "LGBTQ indoctrination," and Ukraine as a mafia state. Orban dismissed the reform as "a new step in the Tisza Party's tyranny" in a Facebook post. A transitional director has been appointed at MTVA, marking the beginning of institutional restructuring.
Peter Magyar has dismantled a propaganda machine that operated openly for 16 years under Viktor Orban, admitting state media lied "on every wavelength." The symbolic timing of the 7:56 p.m. relaunch ties democratic renewal to the memory of the crushed 1956 revolution. No African or Nigerian narratives were cited in the disinformation samples, though claims of criminal African migrants were among those broadcast. The overhaul exposes how state media can become a weapon when legal structures are rewritten to erase balance.
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