The Guardian has replied to V4NA s letter, in which we inquired why they have failed to detai their interviewee s anti-Semitic statements in their report on Budapest.

The Guardian has recently published a lengthy interview with the mayor of a district in Hungary s capital, Budapest. The interview s background is that Mayor Krisztina Baranyi has plans to erect a monument for the BLM movement in her district, arguing that opposing racist exclusion and police brutality is also a relevant issue in Hungary.

As V4NA reported earlier, The Guardian did not seem overly perturbed by the fact that Krisztina Baranyi herself has also been embroiled in an anti-Semitic scandal. With regard to this issue, we inquired with The Guardian, asking how they could – in their interview about exclusion – leave the interviewee s harsh anti-Jewish remarks unmentioned.  

In its question, V4NA wanted to know whether the portal was aware that, according to a sound recording, Krisztina Baranyi had called an investor a „damn, rotten Jewish person”.

In its explanatory reply, GNM s spokesperson said „the recording of Krisztina Baranyi is mentioned in the article in question,” and with that, The Guardian considers the case regarding its report on exclusion closed.

However, The Guardian has carefully concealed some of the details of the scandal from its readers. Their article does not feature an exact quote of Ms Baranyi s anti-Semitic statement. All it says is that the mayor claimed that her words had been taken out of context, and that she would sue Hungary s public service broadcaster. In reality, the recording was published by a commercial channel, not Hungary s public media. At this point, the liberal mouthpiece considered the case closed and tapped itself on the shoulder for having covered it.

The paper and the interviewee also remained silent about the fact that the mayor s claims were refuted by the members of the district assembly and not by the media. Ms Baranyi s found herself opposed not by the media, but by the (non-ruling party) representatives of her own assembly, who refuted Ms BAranyi s statements. Many say the exclusionary remark does come from the mayor.

On behalf of her party and the New Pole faction comprising local representatives of the Jobbik party, Andrea Jancso (from the Hungarian Momentum movement) announced that the members of the group strongly reject Ms Baranyi s statements.

In their statement, they emphasized that members of the New Pole faction had made no anti-Semitic remarks during the meeting in question.

„We could not accept Mayor Krisztina Baranyi s anti-Semitic statements then and we cannot accept them now. We continue to refuse to share a community of values with politicians who make derogatory statements, either in public or in private, about others regarding their gender, racial identity, ethnic belonging, or religion. Shifting responsibility to others and accusing allies of anti-Semitism is clearly a sign of the mayor s inability to assess the weight of her own words for the umpteenth time, and to take responsibility not only for her individual decisions but for her words uttered in her weak moments,” the statement said.

In response to V4NA s questions, The Guardian said they had mentioned the issue and did not wish to comment further.

V4NA s questions were as follows: 

1. Were you aware that, according to a sound recording, Krisztina Baranyi has called an investor a „damn, rotten Jewish” person?
2. Do you think this qualifies as anti-Semitism?
3. Are you aware of the series of anti-Semitic scandals on the Hungarian left, most recently that of Laszlo Biro, a politician from the Jobbik party, who called Budapest „Jewdapest” and referred to Jewish people as „earlocked Jews”?
4.  Are you also planning to report on this in your paper?