President of the Republic Tamás Sulyok is not the only figure the Prime Minister Péter Magyar of Hungary is demanding a resignation from. After news broke of supposed internal messages being leaked, PM Magyar has also called on the leaders of two Hungarian state media companies, Dániel Papp of MTVA and Anita Altorjai of Duna Médiaszolgáltató, to leave their positions.
The newsroom of the commercial TV channel RTL has obtained internal emails from the Hungarian public media company MTVA that were sent to staff ahead of the 2026 parliamentary election. RTL aired the segment on their news programme about the alleged leaked internal messaging on Sunday, 31 May.
According to RTL, the editorial staff of the news programmes on the Hungarian public TV channels was instructed by News Director Zsolt Németh to cover stories that painted the then-opposition Tisza Party in a bad light.
One of the supposed leaked emails is dated 2 April, ten days before the election. In it, Németh asks the news staff to focus on another supposed leak, that of Tisza’s energy plan that the Hungarian news site Index claimed to have received; and which purported that the Tisza government is planning on doing away with the reduced utility price programme if elected to power.
This was part of a larger, 600-page leak about the Tisza economic plan, which allegedly included a slew of austerity measures. PM Magyar and the Tisza leadership have always denied the authenticity of the information. The party even sued Index, and a judge sided with Magyar’s group and ordered Index to issue a correction in March 2026.
Another supposed leaked email made public by RTL from Hungarian state media was sent on election day, 12 April. Director Németh was asking to get comments from right-wing analysts on air, after allegedly complaining that ‘only the leftist narrative is running’ about the analysis of the turnout data.
In response to the story, PM Magyar wrote in a post to his Facebook page: 'Now that it has been proven that the materials disparaging Tisza in the public media were produced on the orders of senior management, CEOs Dániel Papp and Anita Altorjai must step down immediately!'
This is not the first time that the public media has come under fire from Magyar.
On 15 April, three days after the Tisza Party secured a two-thirds supermajority in parliament, Magyar was interviewed by Beáta Cseke on the primary public TV station M1. The discussion quickly turned fiery, with Magyar calling out the station for not inviting him for interviews prior to the election—a claim that Cseke disputed.
During the same interview, Magyar also vowed to stop the public TV news broadcasts as soon as he takes office. He did not follow through with that upon actually assuming office on 9 May. However, he did reiterate his intentions as a threat if Papp and Altorjai do not relinquish their leadership positions in state media.
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