Media Service Support and Asset Management Fund

Background

MTVA brought together four public media companies in Hungary: Magyar Rádió (MR), Magyar Televízió (MTV), Duna Televízió (Duna TV) and Magyar Távirati Iroda (MTI). At the same time, MTI was given the exclusive right to produce news content for the public broadcasters. According to Hungarian politicians, the establishment of MTVA helped clean up the country's "dysfunctional public broadcasting sector". However, the media reform received criticism from foreign politicians and media experts, who believed the reform limited the independence of broadcasters and gave the government greater control over the country's public broadcasters.

The four broadcasters continued as four divisions under MTVA, but were merged into a one-joint broadcasting company named Duna Média on 1 July 2015. This nonprofit organization was the legal successor to each of the four formerly separate entities managed by the MTVA. The Duna TV channel become the main generalist channel, replacing the first Magyar Televízió channel M1, the oldest in Hungary, which changed its format/genre and assumed continuous broadcast of news related programming.

Among other things, MTVA was responsible for distributing funds and resources to the various departments in Duna Média. Most employees of Duna Média were also employed through MTVA. According to the National Assembly, MTVA aimed to have a relationship with its British counterpart, BBC.

Criticism

A 2019 report by the European Federation of Journalists stated that news coverage of the Hungarian public broadcaster was not balanced, opposition politicians' viewpoints were nearly absent from the reports, and there was a lack of transparency over the funding and work of MTVA. The report concluded that the "public service media have been deformed into state media." Moreover, MTVA withdrew its participation from the EBU's Eurovision Song Contest amid a rise in anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment among the leadership of Hungary and MTVA; while no official reason for the withdrawal was given by the broadcaster, an inside source speaking with the website Index.hu speculated that the contest was considered "too gay" for MTVA to participate.

Dissolution

Following the Tisza Party winning a landslide victory in the 2026 parliamentary election, Péter Magyar became the Prime Minister of Hungary, ending Fidesz's 16-year period under Viktor Orbán. According to a report by Reporters Without Borders, where Hungary had ranked 74th out of 180 countries in their 2026 index, MTVA had become a "propaganda machine" as a result of "political and economic manoeuvres and the buyout of media outlets by oligarchs with close ties to Fidesz", which gave Orbán's party an estimated 80% control of Hungary's entire media landscape. While prime minister-elect, Magyar criticised MTVA and its leadership. He stated that he would shut down MTVA and reform Hungary's public broadcasting system, liking it to "North Korean-style propaganda" during a live on-air interview on the channel's news programme, M1, which was also his first appearance on the national broadcaster in 18 months.

On 5 June 2026, Dániel Papp, the chief executive and director of MTVA, announced his resignation from the broadcaster, citing the government's plans to restructure the broadcaster as his reasons for leaving.

On 12 June 2026, three TISZA MPs submitted a bill to the Hungarian Parliament "on the complete transformation of public media", which would amend the Act on Media Services and Mass Communication, which passed in late 2010 to create MTVA under the Second Orbán Government. The bill reformed the structure of Hungary's public service broadcaster by replacing MTVA and Duna Média with two new organisations, which includes the creation of the Hungarian Television and Radio broadcaster (Hungarian Radio and Television), as well as the reinstatement of MTI as an independent entity.

The Independent Public Media Council was established to oversee the system and the Press Fund was set up to support independent journalism through grants. Hungarian Television and Radio had previously operated under a single institutional framework from 1957 until its dissolution in 1974, after which the radio and television broadcasters ran as independent organisations until the creation of Duna Média in June 2015.

Its activities included radio, television, news agencies and online services as listed below:

Radio

Kossuth Rádió: News and current affairs

Petőfi Rádió: Pop music and youth programming

Bartók Rádió: Classical and jazz music

Controversies

In 2011, MTVA's news editor Dániel Papp manipulated a news segment about politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit to make it look like he fled the scene without an answer after being questioned on accusations of child abuse. Subsequently, uncut footage showed that Cohn-Bendit replied to the reporter's questions and denied the accusations. Papp was later promoted. In the same year, Zoltán Lomnici, the former president of the Supreme Court was blurred out from a report about a press conference he was co-hosting. The censoring of Lomnici was suggested to be politically motivated.

In 2019, a leaked audio recording made during the run-up to European Parliament elections showed a senior MTVA editor, Balázs Bende, informing reporters that the institution does not favor the opposition's list and the reporters should work accordingly. Bende instructed the reporters to produce content using the "appropriate" narrative and methodology, especially on topics like Brussels and migrants.