Magyar Narancs’s chosen imagery

For its article covering the NSO spyware scandal, the left-liberal paper chose to show Interior Minister Sándor Pintér standing in front of an Israeli flag. This is not the first time that the Magyar Narancs has published tasteless articles about Judaism. 

As our paper wrote, the claim is spreading in Hungarian and international media that Hungarian and foreign journalists were being listened to with Israeli spyware. 

An article on the case was also published in the Magyar Narancs left-liberal weekly, which in its chosen opening image shows Interior Minister Sándor Pintér standing in front of an Israeli flag.

Magyar Narancs cover image. July 22, 2021. Photo: Facebook

As memory serves, this is not the first time that the Magyar Narancs has published tasteless articles about Judaism. 

In 2018, the newspaper published a portrait of Shlomo Köves, the lead rabbi of EMIH, in addition to the inscription “Business and Judaism”; the Action and Protection Foundation protested against the tasteless photo. 

Magyar Narancs 2018 cover. Photo: TEV

In addition, in 2020, the paper spread the fake news that Yaakov Litzman, the then Haredi Israeli Minister of Health, got covid after blaming homosexuals for the virus. Due to the fake news, the page was later forced to correct the article. 

Meanwhile, this year Magyar Narancs

  • Published criticism of antisemitism in Hungary by British MP Zarah Sultana without any critical remarks, even though Sultana has called Zionism a „racist ideology” and accused Israel of committing an „Arab Holocaust,” and
  • Interviewed President of Jobbik Péter Jakab without confronting the politician with any of his previous antisemitic or racist statements. 

The editor-in-chief of the Magyar Narancs is Endre B. Bojtár. 

János Betlen: In the West, the image of Hungary is disproportionately negative 

According to János Betlen, who gave an interview to the portal MediaPiac, the left-wing Western press paints an unreasonably gloomy picture of Hungary and elites today are an increasingly destabilizing force.