Right wing journalist fulminates against foreign correspondents

Népszabadság calls Magyar Nemzet’s Brussels correspondent a loose cannon after István Lovas excoriated foreign correspondents for misrepresenting facts and events in their reports.

In Népszabadság, Gábor Horváth argues that officials and pundits who criticise the foreign press do harm to themselves and the government they intend to defend. István Lovas admitted himself that his letter was extremely rude in style,  but “you sh..heads deserve it”, he wrote, since “you failed to report on the gigantic scandals of the Socialists, rocking the country, in trying to frame Fidesz in the Baja elections, or former PM F. Gyurcsány’s public admission that MSZP, when he was at its helm, received funds secretly from outside Europe, while just to earn your keep, you continue to write reams about everything else except the events that really move Hungary and the electorate.” Gábor Horváth says Lovas’s case, nevertheless, is just one of many when ambassadors and other officials phone editors or write disclaimers and try to confute allegations they deem groundless or exaggerated. Those moves are bound to backfire, he believes, for they just reflect a kind of “powerless wrath” which is not going to change anybody’s opinion. On top of it all, Horváth remarks, “those gentlemen” have no reason to be overly worried, for it is “not at all certain” that the right wing is going to lose the next elections.

Tags: foreign press