Classic satire about communism aired first as Hungarian public media news channel resumes broadcasting

A few hours after the news broadcast on the Hungarian public service was suspended on Tuesday, broadcasting resumed on M1, the channel that used to be dedicated exclusively to news. Until the new programming lineup is finalized, the channel will only be showing films. In honor of the 70th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the channel’s broadcasting resumed at 19:56, with the Hungarian cult classic, The Witness.

The 1969 satire about communism was banned for ten years due to its outspoken criticism of the communist regime in Hungary, and to this day, Hungarians often quote many of its lines in everyday conversation.

News broadcasting was also suspended on the main news channel of the public radio service, Kossuth Radio, which had previously served as a platform for Viktor Orbán’s Friday morning “interviews”, where he didn’t need to worry about receiving any critical questions. During this transitional period, the station will be broadcasting melodies from the classical music channel Bartók Radio.

Programming continues uninterrupted on the Duna, Duna World, M2, and M5 television channels; however, content related to public affairs must now be edited in accordance with the fundamental principles of press ethics such as impartiality, factual accuracy, and editorial independence. On M4 Sport, everything produced independently of the M1 news studio will remain on the air; this means that the brief “news segments” which used to be inserted during the commercial breaks of sports broadcasts with high viewership are also a thing of the past.

The interim CEO of the public broadcaster, András P. Horváth was appointed last week. According to Telex sources, even before the news service was suspended on Tuesday, the new CEO relieved Zsolt Németh, the director of M1 of his duties and Zsolt Mezei, the deputy director of content services was also let go. Several program hosts were also dismissed, while Attila Császár, one of the channel’s reporters known for his biased reporting was escorted out of the building by security guards.

The state news agency published a press release at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday announcing that the new, interim leadership of the public media had taken office. According to the announcement, once the transitional period has ended, the permanent leaders of the public media will be selected through an official application process.