Last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave an interview on opposition television channel ATV for the first time in 15 years. The interview has been viewed by more than one million people since, becoming the most viewed programme in the channel’s history. However, the reporter, Egon Rónai, has also received a significant number of death threats.
‘Extreme positive and negative reactions on social media have become part of our work. What is extraordinary now is the sheer volume,’ Rónai said last week. Since then, however, the situation has escalated even further.
According to ATV’s management, the presenter has received death threats not only on his social media pages but publicly as well. Hungarian outlet Blikk reports that what upset staff at the channel most was discovering that journalists from other outlets had also made statements which, in ATV’s view, constitute criminal offences.
‘Rónai must be walking half a metre above the ground right now, thinking this is the peak of his career—that after ages he became the first “opposition figure” Orbán agreed to speak with—instead of putting a bullet in his head after realizing he has reached the top of a thoroughly manipulated professional life, or at least handing in his resignation,’ András Bruck, a columnist for the leftist liberal Élet és Irodalom, wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday—prompting ATV CEO Szilárd Németh to initiate legal action.
According to him, the Orbán interview received overwhelmingly positive feedback; and the channel will try to ‘defend our colleagues’ from attacks that they are ‘no longer obliged to endure’. Therefore, he continued, ATV is filing a criminal complaint due to the death threats against Egon Rónai.
ATV is basing its complaint on Section 332/A of the Criminal Code, in force since 1 January. The provision states that any person who, before a large public audience and via an electronic communications network, uses or publishes an expression, depiction, image, or audio recording that expresses an intention or desire to commit a violent, lethal, or particularly cruel criminal act against an identifiable person or persons—if a more serious offence is not committed—may be punished with up to one year of imprisonment.
Watch the interview below:
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