A Skype interview, in which a leftist journalist explains that they receive detailed instructions during work on who to talk to and on how they are dependent on NGOs, has been brought to the attention of the Magyar Nemzet newspaper.

The voluminous set of documents sent to the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet from an unknown e-mail address contains an abundance of interesting information in addition to the “confessions” of the ex-director of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which V4NA also reported on. A real gem, for example, is the Skype interview with left-wing journalist Matyas Kalman, in which the writer for the government-critical 24.hu portal and a former employee of the Index news portal said they would receive thorough instructions on who to talk to and how they depended on NGOs.

Various NGOs manipulate and even bribe journalists reporting on Hungary, who in many cases write about the events in the country in a highly distorted way, according to the Skype interview with Matyas Kalman. In the interview sent to Magyar Nemzet, the journalist reported that:

It is impossible to know whether (the given journalist) had just received an invitation to a good hotel and how much he was offered to write what they wanted to hear echoed back in the media,

explained Mr Kalman.

He gave an example from his personal experience:

I was invited to Brussels and Strasbourg to report on individual events. In situations like this, journalists are practically instructed where to go and who to talk to. And if you are in another country, you are certainly in need of an organiser you can trust to connect you with the best speakers and experts,

he explained.

The video reporter said it was not good that the press is dependent on NGOs to such an extent and that it was difficult to operate transparently in such circumstances. “If they rely on an NGO for all of this, the journalist is completely dependent on that organization, and that’s not a very good thing. If, for example, there is a major international event, such as a refugee crisis, attracting many reporters, they are obviously not being invited by NGOs, but are being sent. But once they are here (the journalists), they have very limited opportunities for who to rely on during their limited stay, ”Matyas Kalman pointed out.

The former employee of the 24.hu portal also mentions a rights advocacy organization funded by George Soros among the NGOs that would bring journalists under their control as much as possible. „Have you really seen NGOs putting (foreign journalists) in a position of dependency and actually restricting their freedom?” Mr Kalman was asked by his interlocutor, to whom he replied:

I believe most NGOs do this, including Amnesty International.

As V4NA also reported, Magyar Nemzet had obtained several hours of Skype interviews in English with Andrey Nosko, who served as a director and then division head of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) until 2018. He oversaw the distribution of grants to think tanks in OSF’s Europe division and was respsonsible for a staff and, reportedly, a budget of some 10 million dollars per year. Nosko is currently European director of PILnet in Budapest.

In the interview, Mr Nosko said, among other things, that international media coverage of Hungary and Poland is distorted, biased and superficial.

He also pointed out that the quality standards of European media outlets have deteriorated recently. “The problem can be illustrated by the fact that there are far fewer foreign correspondents in the mainstream media, covering the affairs of more countries. This, in turn, has led to intellectual laziness in the mainstream media, which has also played a central role in the development of the phenomenon outlined above. This leads to a situation where it is very easy to castigate Poland and Hungary without any real arguments,” Mr Nosko said.In other words, he added, these reports are biased.

As an example, he mentioned that

when he worked for George Soros’s foundation, foreign correspondents typically asked the organization if they could recommend someone to talk to on a particular topic. Those contacted, who were biased to varying degrees, usually recommended their own colleagues, that is, people with convictions similar to their own.

On several occasions, Mr Nosko also hired journalists to promote the materials of the think-tank fellows.

“So, the game was not very evenly matched,” admitted the former OSF director. He also said the language also made it relatively easy to misrepresent what is happening in Hungary. „Not many foreign journalists speak Hungarian, so they can’t talk to ordinary people, for example, and they can’t read the local news.” Therefore, most of them can only rely on secondary sources. Nosko added that these secondary sources are often highly biased, among other things, about the legitimacy of the Hungarian government.

The words of the former director of the OSF echo a recent report in the Spanish press about coordinated liberal attacks against Hungary and Poland. Provoking rather strong reactions, the article quoted from private conversations and statements from former Spanish MEP Carolina Punset, who was active in the liberal ALDE group as a representative of civic liberal Ciudadanos party. According to Ms Punset, it is not Hungary and Poland that pose a real threat to the freedom of expression, but rather the staunch advocates of political correctness in Brussels. In a series of private conversations, she revealed that

while the two countries are constantly condemned in Brussels, the most important threats to freedom of expression in Europe, such as Islamist attacks on journalists or women, are not mentioned for fear of repercussions, attacks from the advocates of political correctness and Muslim radicals.