Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ I'm on a mission to find out The Truth About Hungary

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. I'm still traveling on my mission to tell the truth about Hungary.

00:00:03.620 You can see all my reports at thetruthabouthungary.com. But today,

00:00:06.980 for the Ezra Levent Show, I have two longer features. The first, I was invited to be on a

00:00:11.420 panel about media here at the Tushványos Hungarian Festival. I sat next to an MP,

00:00:17.300 and we both talked about it. That was fun. And then I take you through a criticism of freedom

00:00:22.780 of the press here in Hungary. I read from one of the most vociferous critics of Viktor Orbán and

00:00:29.100 the Fidesz government what they claim he's doing to infringe on press freedom. I'll take you

00:00:34.880 through word for word their report, and I'll give you my reaction. That's all I had. For those of

00:00:39.200 you who are not yet subscribing to Rebel News Plus, let me encourage you to do so. It's the video

00:00:43.740 version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com. All right, here's today's podcast.

00:00:59.100 Tonight, what is press freedom like in Hungary? It's July 21st, and this is the Ezra Levent Show.

00:01:11.300 You're fighting for freedom! Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:01:17.640 I decided to go to Hungary, the country in Central Europe that was once dominated by the Nazis and

00:01:32.420 then the Soviets, because I want to find the truth about the country. It's a small country,

00:01:36.160 just 10 million people. And because the language is really inscrutable to most people, we don't

00:01:41.520 really know what's going on other than through the lens of major mainstream media, like, say,

00:01:47.020 the New York Times or the Washington Post. It's just not a beat covered by smaller or independent

00:01:52.260 players. But I sense something was wrong, because Hungary and its Prime Minister Viktor Orbán are

00:01:59.200 denounced and attacked by the mainstream media in the way that conservatives in the West are denounced

00:02:04.740 and attacked. But at least in that case, there is the other side of the story being told.

00:02:09.320 Not so much with Hungary, and so we decided to tell the other side of the story, and we went to Hungary,

00:02:15.180 and we set up a special website called thetruthabouthungary.com. One of the truths we learned is that not

00:02:21.820 all Hungarians are in Hungary proper, because the country was chopped up in an international treaty about

00:02:27.240 a hundred years ago. And there are many ethnic Hungarians in other countries, over a hundred thousand

00:02:32.600 in neighboring Ukraine, for example. Quite a few here in Romania, which is another country that borders

00:02:39.120 Hungary. And in fact, I'm here in Tushnad, if I'm pronouncing it right, because there is a ethnic

00:02:48.320 Hungarian festival that attracts Hungarians from all over Romania. And in fact, it's treated as a kind

00:02:56.000 of outpost by Hungarian political leaders. Orbán himself will speak here tomorrow. It's a fascinating

00:03:03.680 mix. I won't describe it again to you, because I did another video on it. It's part cultural festival,

00:03:09.620 part food and music festival, part political conference. And funny enough, I was invited to

00:03:17.280 sit on a panel discussion about the media in 2023. Now, I know a lot about the media in Canada, but I know

00:03:24.640 very little about the media in Hungary, other than I saw some other journalists here at the conference,

00:03:29.860 including a state broadcaster, which tells me that perhaps the Hungarian state broadcaster is not

00:03:36.080 quite as left-wing as it is in Canada. Anyways, I'm going to show you my contributions on the panel

00:03:42.540 discussion. I just gave a few remarks, and they were well-received. And I talked with a Hungarian MP

00:03:50.280 who was on the panel. So I gave some of my thoughts. Some of it was a report on how we're doing in Canada,

00:03:56.160 and some of some advice for Hungary and how they should approach a media that is, there's a domestic

00:04:03.200 Hungarian media, but then there's a massive foreign-funded attack media, the funding either from Soros or,

00:04:11.640 believe it or not, the U.S. government. So I'm going to do two parts to the show today. The first will be

00:04:17.500 my contributions to this media panel. And frankly, I think you'll have heard some of it before

00:04:22.300 in different monologues. But then come right back, because I did a bit of a deep dive into the

00:04:29.580 criticisms of Orban and his treatment of the free press here. And I want to take you through one

00:04:35.680 particular report by a Western sort of media monitors, anti-disinformation fact check kind of

00:04:43.320 NGO run by Reuters. So you know where they're coming from. So I attended this panel, and I was quite

00:04:49.880 pro-Hungary. You'll detect that. And obviously, the Hungarian MP was pro-Hungary. But I thought,

00:04:55.540 okay, it behooves me to check what the critics are saying. So come right back after the panel,

00:05:00.560 and I'm going to take you through a criticism of Hungary's freedom of the press and my reaction to it.

00:05:07.160 All right, here are my comments to a panel at the Tusványos Hungarian conference here in Romania.

00:05:19.880 Thanks very much. Thank you for the invitation. I'm Ezra Levan. I'm from Canada. Some of you may

00:05:32.440 have heard of our website called rebelnews.com. We're based in Canada. We also have a strong

00:05:38.880 reporter in Australia, and we've done work from the UK to the United States. And occasionally,

00:05:43.040 we go on adventures like we're doing right now in Hungary and Romania, the Netherlands,

00:05:48.940 really anywhere around the world. And our name rebel news suggests that we're outside the

00:05:55.660 establishment. But we're not just outside the political and media establishment. For example,

00:06:01.720 our staff do not have journalism degrees. We call it citizen journalism. And so they may not have some of

00:06:08.020 a professional polish. But what they lack is in professional credentials. They have in authenticity.

00:06:16.200 And I think that shows through. And I think in this day and age of cynicism, people can respect a

00:06:22.240 citizen journalist even more than a professional journalist, especially if they understand who

00:06:27.760 funds it. I think that these days, a lot of journalists are actually activists. They're very

00:06:34.560 politicized. I understand recently the United States has sent $25 million to Hungary to prop up critical

00:06:41.340 journalists on a mission, really, to attack the government. And I think the source of funding is

00:06:47.140 an essential part of their identity. One of the challenges of being a citizen journalist is that

00:06:53.220 it's hard. The average donation to Rebel News is $58 Canadian. But we're able to support a staff of 47

00:07:01.300 people through lots and lots of $58 donations. And while that means we're always asking our viewers

00:07:08.820 for support and someone to get irritated, it's essential for that trust. In Canada, you may have

00:07:15.260 heard a few, a year ago, that in protest to the vaccine mandate and the lockdowns, there was a giant

00:07:23.860 convoy of trucks that came to Ottawa. Thousands of truckers. It was a grassroots, leaderless movement.

00:07:32.860 All of the media condemned it as radical, racist. They even said it was violent. But our citizen

00:07:42.760 journalists went out with just their little cell phones and filmed what was happening on the streets.

00:07:48.380 And we had hundreds of millions of views. And really, anyone who could hold a camera of all

00:07:55.540 their phone is a journalist. So we were rebelling against the journalistic establishment and the

00:08:01.100 credentialization of media. We were rebelling against the technology of media. If you have a cell phone,

00:08:08.440 you are a journalist. Sure, you can upgrade a little bit, but you don't need to.

00:08:12.820 In fact, the rough quality of your work shows that you're authentic. I believe that everyone

00:08:21.540 is a pundit. Everyone has a political point of view, but it's very valuable to be on the ground

00:08:26.600 with a camera filming what actually happens. That's the first link in the food chain for the

00:08:32.480 pundits to talk over it. So for example, my colleague Lincoln and I, we set up a special crowdfunding

00:08:38.560 website, thetruthabouthungary.com. And we said, we're going to go to Hungary and tell the story

00:08:46.380 that the mainstream media doesn't tell. If you think that's important, please chip in.

00:08:51.920 So we try and monetize every cost we have. Let me, I don't want to take too much time because

00:08:59.680 I don't know how long you've set aside for opening remarks. Okay. It's fascinating to me to learn

00:09:08.580 about Hungary because it's difficult. Hungarian is a very difficult language for people in North

00:09:15.240 America to learn. It doesn't feel similar to French, Italian, Spanish. So that makes it hard

00:09:21.220 to understand. Hungary is a small nation in terms of population, unlike Irish Americans or Italian

00:09:29.560 Americans or Jews, that it's not a very large expat community in North America. In fact, the most

00:09:37.560 prominent Hungarian overseas is George Soros, who has a very particular point of view. And so the

00:09:45.440 combination of the language barrier, the lack of Western expat champions for Hungary makes it difficult

00:09:55.360 to get primary information. I think that's why people were excited in North America to crowdfund our

00:10:01.660 little jury, just as an example. And then you have the layer of what, and so there's criticism of

00:10:10.320 Hungary in the Western media, but it's hard to double check it. It's hard to validate or verify

00:10:16.140 it because again, of these barriers. What's interesting is that one of the calumnies, one of the accusations

00:10:23.360 against Hungary is that it's authoritarian, that it doesn't respect civil rights, including political

00:10:30.220 dissent. That's fascinating to me. I have seen no evidence of that. In fact, I've seen the opposite and

00:10:36.600 I've seen the undermining with the State Department funding of critical journalists is shocking. And I

00:10:44.060 did the math. If he took $25 million for a country of 10 million people, imagine if Sridharj had sent the

00:10:52.080 same proportion to America. That would be $750 million just to journalists in America to dig out

00:11:01.860 dirt on Biden. That would be a shocking, not only a violation of national sovereignty, but in a way

00:11:08.180 that's undermining the free press because it's a kind of false journalist. If you are a journalist

00:11:15.100 with a particular political agenda, paid by a foreign power, you're not actually a journalist.

00:11:20.860 You dress like a journalist, you walk and talk like a journalist, but it's a kind of drag. You're a drag

00:11:27.100 queen journalist in a way. And so I think that comes down to... So it's fascinating that they

00:11:33.760 accuse Hungary of being authoritarian. I don't see it, but they use tactics against Hungary that I think

00:11:39.600 are sketchy. My prime minister in Canada, Justin Trudeau, holds himself out to be a champion of civil

00:11:48.100 liberties, but he invoked a form of martial law to repel the trucker convoy. This convoy I mentioned

00:11:55.280 of all the trucks. He brought in a kind of martial law called the Emergencies Act. He jailed activists,

00:12:03.460 peaceful activists, for weeks. He seized hundreds of personal bank accounts without legal process.

00:12:11.660 That sounds authoritarian. And the temerity of him to criticize Hungary is shocking to me.

00:12:18.460 But let me tell you what it's like in closing to be a kind of rebel journalist in Canada. Because I

00:12:26.640 understand here in Hungary, the media is fairly balanced, critics and supporters. I understand that

00:12:32.980 the state broadcaster is here to cover this event, which suggests they're open-minded. But Victor

00:12:40.180 Orban's not going to live forever. And one day, Trudeau will not be in power. That may seem unthinkable to

00:12:48.260 you now. But one day, you will be the opposition, the critics, the contrarians. And so these levers of

00:12:57.280 the state, the state broadcaster and other institutions, may fall into the hands of people who do strangle

00:13:03.780 rest for you. In my country of Canada, Trudeau is gradually encroaching on the media. He's colonizing

00:13:11.140 them by giving them government payments, which makes them less likely to criticize him. And he's

00:13:17.300 starting to bring in a system of licensing called the Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization. It's a

00:13:24.940 license. You'd have to apply to the government for a form of license. And if you don't get it, you lack

00:13:31.000 certain civil liberties. And obviously, rebel news applied and we were rejected. It's shocking to me

00:13:37.880 that Canada would criticize Hungary when that's what we're doing back home. But if I had one message

00:13:44.360 or lesson for Hungary, and for those who care about the media and who understand how the media is so

00:13:52.360 deeply linked to politics, it would be this. Prepare now for when you are in the wilderness,

00:13:59.960 for when you are exiled from political power. Prepare now for when you no longer have some of the

00:14:05.820 access and financing you may have. And we had to build our company in a very difficult way because we

00:14:15.320 were censored and silenced by advertisers. We were de-platformed. We were canceled because we were

00:14:23.960 supportive of Donald Trump, for example, but not even over the top. We just showed what he said.

00:14:29.960 YouTube turned off their ads, costing us more than a million dollars a year. Then we were critical of

00:14:37.280 vaccine mandates. So then YouTube turned off something called Super Chats, which is like a

00:14:43.320 donation. That costs us another $400,000 a year. So how did we survive when we were blacklisted and

00:14:50.840 cut off and censored? The necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. And if I had one piece of

00:14:58.840 advice for Hungarians who want their own voices told, who want to tell their own stories, whether it's

00:15:06.280 culturally or politically or politically as we do, it would be this. Build a direct connection with your

00:15:13.720 viewers. And I believe the crowdfunding model, which we have built by necessity, is a life raft that you

00:15:22.760 will need when they finally sink your battleship. And there is nothing that our enemies can do to stop us

00:15:32.120 because we have a direct connection with actually more than 1 million people. We have 4 million people

00:15:39.160 in our database, 1 million active users of our emails that we send emails to, and hundreds of

00:15:46.120 thousands of individual gifts, averaging size $58. So there's no boss who can phone me up and say,

00:15:55.320 kill that story on, we did the story on George Soros the other day. We did the story on the

00:16:01.160 House of Terror Museum. And we spoke very bluntly about the communists. But there's no one who can

00:16:07.560 call me up and say, kill that story, fire that person, because we have no single person who gives us

00:16:13.720 more than 1% of our money. And so using the tools that are almost free, like I don't know what they're

00:16:22.600 called in Hungary. But where I come from, there's a lot of different mail services, Constant Contact,

00:16:28.520 MailChimp. There's different services that you can use to build up a list. But let me give you one

00:16:37.000 key part of that. You must own your own data. You must have those names, because you want to be able

00:16:45.880 to survive the cancellation that comes to you when you offend a power that be. Let me close with an

00:16:54.440 example of that. One day, PayPal cut us off. We did millions of dollars of donations through PayPal.

00:17:04.280 We were a preferred customer. And then one day, they shut us down. You know, we had all our data,

00:17:11.160 we had the names of our customers, and we had to move to another credit card processor. Prepare now

00:17:17.720 for when that happens. I know I'm sounding apocalyptic. I'm sounding defensive, and I'm

00:17:23.080 sounding like I am in a battle. In Canada, I am. It's ironic that I'm here in Hungary or Romania,

00:17:30.680 a place with freedom of the press. And I'm coming from a country that holds itself out to be

00:17:37.160 civil rights-oriented. And yet, at home, I'm censored. But my message to you would be,

00:17:43.080 each of you can be a journalist. If you have a phone and a social media account,

00:17:50.200 that's the start of it. And then if you capture the names and email addresses of your supporters,

00:17:56.680 just ask for it. Have a petition to build it up. And if you do that, over the course of time,

00:18:03.800 you will eventually rival what I call the legacy media or the regime media. And all the things that

00:18:13.640 they will chastise you for, that you're just a citizen, you're not a professional, that you just use

00:18:21.560 your cell phone and not a fancy camera, that you ask for donations. Those are the things that make you

00:18:28.680 strong and in the long-term stronger than men. So, in closing, let me just look at my notes.

00:18:36.680 I would say Hungary, despite what the foreign critics say, is actually a wonderful place to be a journalist

00:18:44.760 today. I fear that that won't always be the case, because the forces that Hungary is up against are

00:18:52.760 actually forces of censorship, and they're trying to censor and cancel Hungary itself.

00:18:58.120 They're trying to censor and cancel your Prime Minister. If they would do that to your Prime

00:19:03.720 Minister, they would do that to you. But you can build your grassroots systems hardened for the

00:19:10.680 battle to come, because it is a battle of ideas. And in Hungary's case, it's a battle for your very

00:19:18.520 identity. Thank you for including me, and I look forward to learning more about Hungary,

00:19:24.600 because that's what I'm here to do. Thanks for including me on the panel.

00:19:38.680 All right, so those were my comments to the media panel. I'm not sure what you think of them. I think

00:19:42.520 you've probably heard me say those things before. The MP talked about what he called the dollar media,

00:19:49.080 which are these foreign-funded attack organizations that are basically, I said they were like

00:19:56.200 in drag pretending to be journalists, but basically they were foreign-funded attack political war rooms

00:20:03.240 to take down Viktor Orban. They haven't succeeded yet, but one day they just might. But in fairness,

00:20:09.240 because there was no Soros outpost, because there was no critic on the panel,

00:20:16.360 I was curious, what would the critics of that MP and of Viktor Orban have said, were they on the panel?

00:20:24.040 And so I started poking around on the internet, and again, it's difficult because I don't speak

00:20:28.520 Hungarian and it's not an easy language to crack, but I came upon this study by nothing less than the

00:20:35.960 Reuters Institute for the study of journalism, co-sponsored by the University of Oxford. I mean,

00:20:42.440 it just doesn't get more blue ribbon than that. And this was a criticism of Hungary and of Orban and

00:20:49.720 the Fidesz party in particular, alleging that they do not support civil liberties. Now, I should say,

00:20:56.280 I have seen no infringements of civil liberties in my time in Hungary, or obviously here in Romania,

00:21:02.120 but that doesn't mean that much because how would I know if it was going on? How would I know what

00:21:07.400 was happening outside my field of vision? And how would I know what's going on in a language I don't

00:21:11.080 speak? So reading this Reuters Institute critique of Hungary was probably the most concentrated

00:21:17.960 objection I could find. And I'd like to take you through it right now because I think it's actually

00:21:22.760 quite incredible. I want to tell you, by the way, that I deeply believe in freedom of speech.

00:21:27.880 And there are some kinds of legal censorship in Hungary that I'm not particularly comfortable with.

00:21:35.800 For example, I understand that an anti-Semitic Hungarian guard movement was banned and that

00:21:43.960 their criticisms of the Jewish community is illegal. Now, I'm obviously Jewish and I don't like criticism

00:21:49.240 of the Jewish community or promoting hatred. I don't like that. But I believe that even

00:21:54.120 haters should have freedom of speech. So that's an example of an act of censorship that I've heard

00:22:00.520 about in Hungary that I'm not comfortable with. But really what I want to know is, are they censoring

00:22:06.040 journalism? Are they censoring criticisms of Orbán? And that's what this study purports to do. So let's

00:22:11.480 jump right in. It's a study of Hungary by Judith Skazaks and Eva Bognar. Following the landslide victory of

00:22:18.040 the ruling Fidesz party in April 2022, leading to a fourth consecutive term for Viktor Orbán as prime

00:22:23.160 minister, many media outlets have started downsizing with some major titles ceasing print publication.

00:22:29.000 OK, let me just start right there. They're implying that that's a political consequence,

00:22:34.760 but I come from Canada and newspapers and websites shut down in Canada all the time because newspapers are

00:22:40.680 dying. TV and radio stations are dying. Everyone's getting things on the internet. I don't really think

00:22:46.920 that's related to Orbán, but let me continue. In the Hungarian media market, 2022 was a turbulent year.

00:22:52.280 With runaway inflation, cost-cutting measures were introduced by many media companies. Following the

00:22:57.560 election's pro-government media conglomerate, Kezma, the owner of over 400 titles, closed some of its smaller

00:23:03.880 publications, downsized staffing at several others, and ended the print publication of major titles,

00:23:09.400 including long-running finance-daily Vilagdajag, the weekly Figyeleo, launched in 1958, and patriotic

00:23:17.400 tabloid Riposte, and forgive me for mispronouncing all of those. It sold Viktor Orbán's favorite

00:23:23.160 newspaper, Sports Daily, Nemzeti Sport, to the state, and in early 2023 merged its opinion portal with

00:23:29.400 another. Pro-government broadsheet Magyar Hurlap, published since 1968, went online only,

00:23:35.240 while government-friendly television channel Pesti TV folded. Several media outlets not

00:23:40.440 clearly aligned with the government have also cut costs. Weekly 168 Aura and free Pesti Hurlap,

00:23:45.880 ceased print publication, and news portal azonale.hu, owned by an opposition MP, closed. On the plus side,

00:23:53.000 RTL and TV2 both launched new online streaming platforms, respectively, with exclusive content for

00:23:58.440 subscribers. So what I see here is that media across the ideological spectrum are closing

00:24:03.960 for economic reasons, just like in Canada, the United States, or anywhere else in the world.

00:24:07.800 But look how they frame it. The closure of media outlets just after the elections suggests a view

00:24:13.080 of the media as a political instrument. It also signals a shift towards social media used by 61% in

00:24:18.760 Hungary in Fidesz's media strategy. Megaphone Center, a conservative social media incubator that trains

00:24:25.480 pro-government influencers and promotes their posts, has been pushing the government's narratives to

00:24:30.360 Hungarian Facebook users' feeds. Megaphone was also one of the biggest spenders on political ads on

00:24:35.080 Facebook in the election campaign, urging citizens to vote for Fidesz. It claims to be funded by private

00:24:40.520 donors. Okay, well, I would have another explanation, which is that the election is a time when a lot of

00:24:45.720 people care about political news. They're going to consume it. And once the election is over, maybe they just

00:24:51.320 don't care about election news anymore. And that, you know, it's not the business case. I just don't

00:24:56.680 see how closing of both government and opposition newspapers is a sign that something political is

00:25:02.760 afoot. I noticed they talk about some influencers online, but they don't mention Soros, by far the

00:25:09.160 largest funder of influencers. But let's keep going. So far, so boring. But they have to come up with some

00:25:13.960 mud to sling against Hungary. So let me tell you what they say. Yet traditional media are also seen as

00:25:19.240 playing an important role in the 2022 Fidesz election victory. The OSCE's Office for Democratic

00:25:25.800 Institutions and Human Rights Election Monitoring Mission reported that, quote, the pervasive bias in the

00:25:32.360 news and current events programs of the majority of broadcasters monitored, combined with extensive

00:25:37.160 government advertising campaigns, provided the ruling party with an undue advantage, unquote. Okay, so they're

00:25:44.120 saying that there is bias in the media, and that there are advertising campaigns, and that's not

00:25:54.040 fair. That could be. I think bias in the media is unfair. But I see bias in the New York Times,

00:26:01.240 the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the CBC, and frankly, every single media that I

00:26:07.320 look at in North America, I don't think it's disputed that the vast majority of the media are on the left.

00:26:14.360 And for those on the right, you know, and on the left, let there be opinions. I don't think you can

00:26:20.280 say that there's a violation of civil liberties because people have an opinion. I'm just waiting,

00:26:25.640 I'm so far, I'm halfway through this article, and I'm waiting for the meat. And I'll get to some

00:26:30.840 examples. State advertising continues to distort the media market, channeling public funds to pro-government

00:26:36.680 media, and starving independent outlets of advertising revenue. Four independent weeklies

00:26:41.560 are planning to sue the government over discriminatory ad purchasing. Now that's very interesting to me,

00:26:46.360 because I've been the president of Rebel News for almost nine years, and we have never, not once,

00:26:51.720 received an ad from the government of Canada. Never once. Maybe I should take a page from these

00:26:58.200 folks and sue Justin Trudeau and demand my fair share. I don't know, it's an idea, but if that's the

00:27:04.680 discrimination they claim about, I suppose we have it in Canada too. Now this next paragraph to me

00:27:12.440 shows just the bad faith of Hungary's critics. Would you agree with me that so far there is no proof

00:27:18.520 by this Western-funded NGO that civil liberties and the freedom of the press is in danger yet?

00:27:24.520 Would you agree with me that closing newspapers is something happening all around the world,

00:27:28.600 that their only evidence so far is that both government and opposition media are closing,

00:27:33.080 and the worst thing they've come up with so far is that the government doesn't spend ad money in all

00:27:37.560 media. Well, same back in home, but let me read you this next paragraph and you'll see something that

00:27:42.920 I found shocking. In July, the European Commission took the government to court over the Media Council's

00:27:51.560 2021 decision to force one of the last independent radio stations, Club Radio, off the air. Hungary's

00:27:58.520 oldest community radio, Telos Radio, nearly faced the same fate when the authority refused to renew its

00:28:03.720 license. After a three-week hiatus, Telos Radio was back on air in September. The commission also referred

00:28:10.840 Hungary to court over the 2021 law that bans content promoting homosexuality to minors.

00:28:19.720 So let's stop for a second. Well, in both Canada and the United States, more so in Canada,

00:28:24.520 the government regulator has the power to license or de-license radio stations. You'll remember the

00:28:29.960 very famous case in Canada of Radio X, Chois-FM, in Quebec, that had views that the government didn't

00:28:36.040 like, so they censored them. The government censor on the CRTC in Canada shut down Howard Stern, shut

00:28:41.720 down Dr. Laura. Anything conservative or too funny or too rambunctious is censored by Canada's CRTC.

00:28:49.000 So again, I don't like it. It sounds like one of the radio stations in Hungary got their license back,

00:28:53.640 but the criticisms here apply in Canada just as much. In fact, in Canada, they're bringing in the

00:28:59.160 QCJO news license. I don't think they're doing that in Hungary. But that second part, that the

00:29:05.400 European Union is suing Hungary over what? What's the censorship they're mad about? A law banning,

00:29:13.400 quote, content promoting homosexuality to minors. Well, you shouldn't be promoting any sexuality to

00:29:21.240 minors. This is Viktor Orban's law against the LGBTQSL plus movement that is storming its way through

00:29:29.880 schools in Canada, the United States, the UK. It's basically Hungary's decision to keep sexuality as an

00:29:36.920 adult manner. There was Pride Week in Hungary the other day. They're allowed a parade, just not in

00:29:43.480 kindergarten drag queen library school book readings. Imagine, though, the chutzpah of the European Union

00:29:51.400 suing Hungary, a sovereign country, for both of these things, for closing a radio station and for banning

00:29:57.800 pornography to minors. It's an astonishing reminder that the European Union is a kind of empire

00:30:04.760 ruling over Hungary, and that pricks Hungarians because they've been part of different empires

00:30:10.680 over the years, from the Austria-Hungary Empire to the Ottoman Empire to the Nazi Empire to the

00:30:15.960 Soviet Empire, and I don't think they liked any of them very much. I'm going to read a little bit more.

00:30:19.880 This is interesting, and it was alluded to in the panel discussion. Media ownership and funding were

00:30:25.720 dominant topics in public debate, following revelations that the opposition parties may have

00:30:29.960 received campaign funds from abroad. Government politicians, the pro-government media, and

00:30:35.720 influencers launched smear campaigns against independent media outlets that have received

00:30:40.760 foreign funding. These media outlets, including Telex and Atletso, are labeled dollar media and are

00:30:47.880 accused of serving, quote, foreign interests. Okay, so if they have received foreign money and the government

00:30:55.880 says you receive foreign money, how is that a civil liberties crisis? How is that anything other than

00:31:03.560 being accurate? I mean, I suppose if you're calling any of your opponents foreign-funded and they're not,

00:31:10.040 maybe that's mean and maybe that's, I don't know, a defamation action if they have that in Hungary, but

00:31:15.800 if they really are foreign-funded and if they really are doing the bidding of their foreign masters,

00:31:21.880 how is it improper in any way for the Hungarian media to call them out? I call the CBC Justin Trudeau's

00:31:32.760 state broadcaster all the time because they are. Maybe that's mean, but it's true. It sounds like

00:31:40.520 not only does Hungary have to battle their own left-wing media, but they have to battle carpetbaggers,

00:31:46.760 fake journalists who are just doing their bidding of foreign masters, obviously including Soros.

00:31:51.320 This next one is interesting. They're trying to tag Orban, who's a NATO member who has given aid to

00:31:57.960 Ukraine, who has taken Ukrainian migrants. Here's what they say about that. Reporting on Russia's war

00:32:03.400 in Ukraine has been controversial, with many seeing Hungary as, quote, the EU capital of Russian

00:32:08.920 disinformation. Although the media authority found that major television channels reported on the war

00:32:13.800 objectively, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and think tank political capital filed a complaint with

00:32:19.320 the European Commission. They went to tattle the mummy, claiming that the public media kept citing Russian

00:32:26.680 propaganda channels, RT and Sputnik, even after they were banned in the EU. So let's stop there for a

00:32:33.640 minute. So they said that the major broadcasters were objective and even-handed in covering the war.

00:32:39.480 That, by the way, is a lot more than we get in Canada and the United States, I should say.

00:32:44.600 But their one complaint is they actually, from time to time it sounds like, quoted the Russian side of

00:32:51.160 the story. Not on balance. You heard them say it was balanced, but from time to time they allowed RT,

00:32:57.400 which is a Soviet state, Russian state broadcaster, or Sputnik, which is the same. The Civil Liberties Union

00:33:03.800 complained that those news outlets were not banned. What? And you're tattling to the European Commission,

00:33:12.040 which is incredible. But let me just say that a third time. The Civil Liberties Union

00:33:19.080 wants journalists banned that the Fidesz government and Viktor Orban have not banned.

00:33:26.600 I don't think they're allowed to call themselves the Civil Liberties Union anymore.

00:33:31.720 If they are the ones calling for censorship and Orban is the one resisting, that's crazy to me.

00:33:36.520 With public discussions of the dollar media and Russian disinformation, it is not surprising that

00:33:41.000 trust in news has decreased to just 25%. Hungary now ranks 45 out of the 46 countries in the

00:33:47.720 digital news report, whoever they are. Not only has trust decreased, but drop was registered in most

00:33:52.920 media outlets reach, though some of it may be related to the change in survey methodology.

00:33:57.560 Once independent, now ProGovernmentIndex.hu and Independent24.hu remain the top online news sources,

00:34:03.720 now followed by ProGovernmentOrigo.hu. In its second full year of operation,

00:34:08.520 Independent Telex is the fourth most often used online news source, etc., etc., and that's basically

00:34:13.480 the end of the story with some charts. But I think that it may be because of Viktor Orban

00:34:21.240 and Fidesz that people don't trust Hungarian media anymore. Or it may be, as this report itself says,

00:34:29.560 that the Hungarian media are indeed funded by foreign actors. If there was suddenly a huge news

00:34:38.280 enterprise in Canada, as big as the Globe and Mail, say, or if there was suddenly a new TV channel in

00:34:44.760 America, as big as CNN, and they were constantly attacking the government, and you found out they

00:34:50.920 were funded by a foreign country, you'd be appalled. Of course you wouldn't trust the media. In fact,

00:34:59.560 you'd go further. In Canada, of course, the CRTC banned RT, banned Russia today. I'm not sure if it's banned in

00:35:06.760 America. I think the First Amendment protected it. But everything they've accused Viktor Orban of doing

00:35:14.840 is something that Justin Trudeau or Western European countries have done, taking licenses away,

00:35:22.360 banning media they don't like. And what they've done in Hungary, funding critical media,

00:35:28.440 they're outraged that people don't trust the media anymore. Let me close this way. The reason I read

00:35:34.440 this to you is this was the most comprehensive, most deeply researched, and most partisan attack

00:35:42.280 on Viktor Orban and the Fidesz government I could find from the other side. This is the accusation.

00:35:50.440 This is the case for the prosecution that Viktor Orban and Fidesz violate civil liberties and don't

00:35:56.840 support freedom of the press. But in fact, a plain reading of this report, and I read to you every

00:36:02.040 word of it, a plain reading of this report says that, in fact, the government supports freedom of

00:36:08.840 the press, allows journalists in, whether they're funded by George Soros or Vladimir Putin. That

00:36:16.120 despite that, the media here is objective, and that newspapers indeed are closing, but they're closing

00:36:22.360 all around the spectrum as they are in the West. And if only we had some of the freedom they had in

00:36:28.040 Hungary, like a regulator that allows controversial licensees on radio, or that can be sued for not

00:36:36.760 advertising with its critics. I don't know. I didn't know that much about the Hungarian media when I was

00:36:42.600 on the panel. But now that I read the case against it, I'm pretty sure that Hungary has a freer media

00:36:48.360 than, oh, I don't know, the UK and Julian Assange in prison or Canada, arresting people they don't

00:36:56.760 like and shooting our reporter, Alexa Lavoie. What do you think? Do you think that Hungary's media is

00:37:02.920 freer than ours in Canada? Let me know. Send me an email to ezra at rebelnews.com. That's the end of

00:37:10.200 the show for today. All of our coverage from Hungary can be found at the truthabouthungary.com.

00:37:15.880 From all of us at Rebel News to you at home, goodbye and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - July 22, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ I'm on a mission to find out The Truth About Hungary

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