Hungary’s Magyar promises to suspend state media broadcasts, ensure press freedom

By Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves

BUDAPEST, April 15 (Reuters) – Hungary’s election winner Peter Magyar said on Wednesday his government will suspend state media broadcasts, pass a new media law and ensure press freedom after his cabinet takes power.

“Every Hungarian deserves a public service media that broadcasts the truth,” Magyar said on Kossuth state radio, where outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orban had been a weekly guest for the past 16 years while opposition politicians rarely got invited.

“We will need a little time to pass a new media law, a new media authority and setting up the professional conditions for state media actually do what it is meant to do,” Magyar added.

Magyar’s TISZA (Respect and Freedom) party won a landslide victory in Sunday’s election, ending Orban’s 16-year rule.

Critics say public media served as a government mouthpiece under Orban and accused him of presiding over the undermining of independent media as allies of his Fidesz party took control of private outlets – charges he denied.

Orban’s landslide defeat handed Magyar a strong majority in Hungary’s 199-seat legislature, opening the door for an overhaul of a system that critics in the European Union said subverted democratic norms.

(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves; Editing by Sonali Paul and Andrew Heavens)