Approaching the 2010 election campaign, deliberate distortions and slanderous nonsense against the Movement for a Better Hungary are to be expected from its political opponents, as part and parcel of the democratic process. But, Jobbik argues, taxpayer funded Hungarian news agencies are now failing in their duty to be impartial to such an extent as to warrant specific investigation.

The Magyar Távirati Iroda (MTI), or Hungarian Telegraphic Agency, was presented with a significant opportunity this week, in the form of an interview with an official from the Council of Europe, none other than the Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg, conducted in Budapest in conjunction with the Leftist national newspaper Népszabadság.

No doubt many Hungarians reading MTI’s report of the interview this Friday, were greatly looking forward to the prospect of such a high ranking European official facing several key questions:

* Why did the Council of Europe permit Slovakia’s accession to the EU when their statute books contain laws deliberately intended to forcibly discriminate against an ethnic population within their borders?

* Indeed, why did the Council not require of Hungary root-and-branch reform of its institutions to prevent the corruption and nepotism that today strangles the nation, before it allowed its own accession to the EU?

* How does the Council intend to prosecute those high ranking police officers and politicians who ordered the Budapest police to charge into peaceful protesters with drawn cavalry sabres in 2006?

* Furthermore, how does the Council intend to make clear that the state sanctioned Human Rights abuses that took place and followed on from 23rd October 2006 were totally unacceptable in a democracy?

* How could he put at rest the minds of the Hungarian old, or parents of the young, who intend to commemorate ’56, over the measures he was taking as Human Rights Commissioner to respond to Dr Krisztina Morvai MEP’s warning that the police were planning a similar action for this year’s celebrations?

* How does the Council plan to discipline the Hungarian Constitutional Court for its blatant contravention of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights covering freedom of association and assembly? And so on.

Unfortunately, those looking forward to hearing Mr Hammarberg answering these questions were to be disappointed. He could not provide an answer to them, because they were never asked of him.

Instead Népszabadság’s reporter endeavoured to elicit the response from Mr Hammarberg that it quite understandably (as an MSZP supporting newspaper) sought, but which MTI dutifully and disturbingly uncritically repeated. Namely, a condemnation of Jobbik’s “rhetoric” as “unacceptable.”

What rhetoric exactly was Mr Hammarberg referring to? Jobbik’s demand that multi-nationals be required to bear a fairer tax burden, in these recessionary times, and not expect it to be met solely by the citizen? Maybe the party’s insistence on the retention of national arable land ownership rights? Or, that Hungarian citizens be allowed to have the same Union representation and workers freedoms as those enjoyed by employees in the Commissioner’s own nation of Sweden? When asked what specific rhetoric he thought was “unacceptable” Mr Hammarberg did not answer. Because he was not asked this question either.

Perhaps he was speaking of Jobbik’s stance on the gay pride parade? That the party is unequivocally opposed (not to homosexual acts, obviously) to a day of state subsidised public lewdness and nudity: as a deliberate foreign import incompatible with Hungarian cultural norms? Had he said so, the Népszabadság reporter could have informed him of the statements of high ranking Fidesz members on this issue earlier in the year, and that political opposition to the parade actually originated with the most centrist Hungarian party, the MDF.

Maybe Mr Hammarberg meant the matter of gypsy crime? The fact that the peculiar socio-economic circumstances of the Roma means that certain types of crime, rather than others, are overwhelmingly attributable to that community? If so, then the MTI journalist could also have told the Commissioner of the nationwide support and acceptance of this definition, ranging from Roma vajda (leaders) like Attila Lakatos to national commentators like János Betlen (no friend of Jobbik and its Chairman Gábor Vona, to be sure); and the relief expressed by senior police officers at a recent Jobbik security conference, at the ability to actually name the problem that faces rural communities to such an overwhelming degree.

In fact, the MTI reporter could also have pointed out that the Commissioner simply had no idea what he was talking about. As the Agency’s article makes clear, Mr Hammarberg has no specific knowledge whatsoever, he is in fact speaking of the “rhetoric” that has been described to him by other Hungarian politicians: in effect Jobbik’s political opponents.

So, an allegedly impartial taxpayer funded news agency reports an international Commissioner’s condemnation of a party, which is in fact solely based not on Jobbik’s supposed “rhetoric” but quite evidently on the actual rhetoric of its opponents. How is it that this kind of uncritically “impartial” reporting exists almost exclusively in Hungary, of all the EU nations?

An examination of MTI serves as a very valuable object lesson in the subtle yet endemic corruption that has beset Hungary for over 20 years:

Founded in 1880 as a telegraphic service, MTI came to prominence during the Communist era where it served the function of the state’s international propaganda agency, similar to Izvestia in the Soviet Union. Its purpose being to provide timely, regime sympathetic, news stories to the national/international community in a variety of languages. Since the events of 1989 it has ostensibly continued in exactly the same function, with the key difference of course being that it is today supposedly politically impartial. Yet the reality could not be further from the truth.

Though in receipt of commercial revenue, MTI’s income is simply insufficient to keep it afloat when competing with global rivals, like Reuters; it therefore heavily relies on taxpayers’ money for its core funding. In any other European country sensitivity about possible conflicts of interest would naturally require the making of the controlling structure of such a state news agency politically independent, through the erection of a Chinese wall, the use of an independent trust for example.

However, MTI is in fact owned by the Hungarian Parliament. And its controlling officer, is a president, elected to office by Parliament on 4/5 yearly terms. As a political appointment therefore, it should be clear that the lucrative presidency of MTI is essentially a gift in the hands of whichever party holds a parliamentary majority, in short, the incumbent government. Furthermore, this means that the Hungarian citizen subsidises through taxation, their government’s ability to internationally distribute its own biased version of events.

The current MTI president, Mátyás Vince, has been in office from 2002 and since that time has loyally continued in the long tradition of his predecessors. His agency’s deafening silence during the events of October 2006 being a case in point.

Mr Vince is perfectly aware that both main parliamentary parties, Fidesz and the MSZP, view their greatest opponent to in fact be the Movement for a Better Hungary. Because Jobbik represents, both the force standing in the way of Fidesz gaining the majority it wants to engage in unopposed future constitutional alterations, and, the party likely to make the MSZP politically obsolete as a body with any future hope of forming a government.

The MTI president also knows that it will be the party which forms a majority in the next parliament who will be responsible for the size of his pension package when he retires in 2012.

The total nationwide uproar over the enormity of recent severance packages given to politically appointed heads of public services, was highlighted by Jobbik MEP Csanád Szegedi in his budget response statement to the Hungarian Parliament on 6th October; a question which MTI chose unsurprisingly not to report.

In fact, we would urge Mr Vince to stop thinking of his wallet, and for once start thinking of his agency’s duty of impartiality to those taxpayers who have been providing his not inconsiderable wages for all these years.

And as for Mr Hammarberg, on one point Jobbik finds itself in total agreement with the Council’s Human Rights Commissioner: more indeed should be done by the European Union to help minorities. Central Europe’s largest acknowledged minority are the Magyars who live immediately outside Hungary’s modern border, and they find themselves daily subject to much more than mere rhetoric, living as they do in countries where discrimination against them and abuse of their human rights is frequently a matter both of accepted government policy, and retained and enforced legal statute.

Even though he was actually visiting Hungary, the Council of Europe’s official deemed the plight of these Hungarians to be unworthy even of a mention. That MTI permitted him to get away with this fact, in the pursuit of its own partisan agenda, is quite simply a disgrace.

(jobbik.com)