Hungary’s Information Machine, 2025: A Rant
First things first: this isn’t “bias,” it’s a build
People say the media’s “captured.” Cute. That’s like saying a bank vault is “occupied” when the blueprint shows a tunnel, a rail line, and a conveyor belt to a truck with the engine running. This thing is architected.
- The origin server is the state newswire and state broadcasters — MTI and the MTVA universe. They decide what exists.
- The CDN (content delivery network) is KESMA — hundreds of synchronized outlets that echo the line on cue.
- The GPU farm is Megafon — a factory of influencers who grind the day’s talking points into short, sticky hits for your feed.
- Around it all? Regulatory firewalls and cash routers: a media council to bless the faithful, ad budgets to feed them, and “sovereignty” laws to scare off anyone who still thinks journalism is a verb.
It’s not propaganda “leaking.” It’s propaganda piped, pressurized, and metered.
Layer 1: Origin & orchestration (MTI → PSM)
The party line doesn’t “emerge.” It’s compiled. MTI writes the headline scaffold; PSM (M1 TV, Kossuth Radio, and friends) slots it into the evening stack. Two steady inputs:
- External frames — the Kremlin-flavored specials — arrive with a fresh coat of “just reporting what was said,” which is like calling a skunk “aromatic wildlife.”
- Internal tropes — “Hungary the peace apostle,” “sanctions hurt you, not the aggressor,” “NGOs run by extraterrestrial sorcerers” — baked right into the lede, so even the punctuation votes yes.
By primetime, the language is scrubbed, the angles are locked, and the show runs like a train schedule. You can set your watch by it, assuming your watch enjoys mixed metaphors and selective amnesia.
Layer 2: Replication at scale (KESMA)
Back in 2018 they didn’t “merge” outlets; they zip-tied them — around five hundred brands into one obedient bundle and stamped it “strategic.” Competition law? Waived. Because when you’re building a megaphone, antitrust is just a fussy librarian with a shush-stick.
What it does:
- Reach: hundreds of outlets, national to hyperlocal.
- Consistency: one frame, many costumes.
- Latency: MTI sneezes in the morning; the country catches the cold by lunch.
If one outlet coughs up a conscience, twenty more belt out the chorus. Redundancy isn’t a glitch — it’s the feature that kills memory.
Layer 3: The social injector (Megafon)
Now for the GPU farm. Think film school, ad agency, and wrestling promo all in one. You’ve got influencers trained like boxer-pilots for meme dogfights. They take the day’s creative kernel, punch it into twelve formats — short, shorter, and “blink and it implanted” — and then buy distribution so you “discover” it organically… the way you “find” a billboard with your forehead while driving.
This isn’t “going viral.” This is a delivery schedule:
- Variant A for the faithful: applause lines and fist-pump B-roll.
- Variant B for the wobbly middle: “just asking questions” with a wink.
- Variant C for the doomscrollers: fast cuts, fake urgency, Zuckerface rage-bait.
- All of it labeled so subtly you need forensic tweezers to find the “sponsored” tag, and by then you’re sharing it to your aunt with the caption “interesting…”
Result? Feeds flooded. Souls numbed. Everyone swears they “heard it somewhere” and nobody remembers it came with a receipt.
The cash router: state ads as oxygen
Follow the money? Fine. The state advertising hose doesn’t “favor” loyal outlets; it feeds them like a neonatal ICU, drip by golden drip. Meanwhile independent shops get told to try intermittent fasting. Every year the numbers lean harder, and suddenly the “free market” looks like a soda machine that only sells the house brand.
The miracle of modern governance: call it “communications,” book it as “public information,” and — presto — the market picks winners! (Spoiler: it’s always the same winners.)
Lawfare: “sovereignty” with a side of paperwork
And because every machine needs a lock, there’s the Sovereignty Protection Act — a law that says, “We’re not censoring you, we’re just investigating your foreign cooties.” Civil society becomes a crime scene; journalism becomes a suspicious odor. Add the regulator that smiles at mergers and frowns at licenses, and you’ve got defense in depth: courts, codes, and committees calibrated to make dissent a security anomaly.
The EU shows up with EMFA and the DSA — new rules, big talk, tight suits. Great! But rules without enforcement are just TED Talks with footnotes. If Brussels can’t land a punch in Budapest, expect every strongman with a Wi-Fi plan to print the blueprint and start fundraising.
The pipeline in motion (AM to PM in one spin cycle)
Here’s a day in the life of a narrative:
- 08:00 MTI frames the piece. “Sources say…” (They always do.)
- 12:00 PSM packages it with “balance”: Guest A shouts nonsense; Guest B politely corrects it once, off-mic.
- 15:00 KESMA portals SEO the headline into a carnival of sameness.
- 19:00 Primetime delivers the sermon.
- 22:00 Megafon chases you from Instagram to YouTube to TikTok with meme variants like mosquitoes at a lakeside wedding.
By tomorrow morning, the fact-checkers are dressed, caffeinated, and already late. The machine doesn’t outrun them; it laps them.
Outcomes: dual realities, zero brakes
Trust? The national mood board says lowest in the EU. But it’s not evenly low — oh no. It’s split. One audience sees PSM as truth with a haircut; the other sees a bald lie in a wig. You can’t debate a country when half of it lives in a mirror universe where “just asking questions” is a full-time job with benefits.
And the belief stuff? Exposed long enough, people don’t just buy the claim — they tire of disbelieving it. Repetition beats rebuttal because rebuttal still respects the rules of grammar and the speed of light.
Why this travels
Want a starter kit for an illiberal information regime?
- Own the origin (newswire + public broadcaster).
- Cartelize the edges (put the market in mittens).
- Outsource the venom (influencers do the dirty work).
- Route the money (state ads are the IV drip).
- Write the locks (foreign-agent theater and regulators on valet duty).
Stamp it “national importance,” call it “security,” throw a patriotic ribbon on the antenna, and watch it migrate across borders like a very organized fungus.
What to measure (if you still carry clipboards)
- Propagation latency: How many hours from MTI wire to your cousin’s For You Page? (Spoiler: one sleep cycle or less.)
- Frame consistency: Count the verbs — “said,” “stated,” “reportedly” — then track who magically never lies.
- Spend vs. reach: Match the ad invoices to the eyeballs. See who got rich convincing you they’re humble volunteers.
- Trust vs. exposure: Cross the survey data with feed diaries. Find the line where fatigue becomes faith.
- State-ad sunlight: Publish recipients, rates, and targets in machine-readable form. Scrape it, graph it, deconsecrate it.
Data won’t fix a steamroller, but at least you’ll know how flat you’re getting.
The closer: the stack is the strategy
This isn’t a mess; it’s a machine. MTI/PSM write the reality file. KESMA mirrors it across a hall of echoes. Megafon pumps it into your veins with a smile and a sound effect. The regulator blesses it. The treasury pays it. The law dares you to call it by its name.
And now EMFA is live and blinking. Europe says it has a wrench big enough for this nut. Terrific. Because if safeguards can’t land in Budapest, the message to every would-be copycat is simple: build bigger, faster, louder — and call it freedom while you’re at it.
Until someone flips the breaker, the loop holds: redundant, synchronized, and on time. The story repeats, the feed refreshes, and the applause sign stays lit.
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