Ezra Levant challenges Western media bias against Hungary’s Viktor Orbán-led Fidesz government, citing underreported citizen journalism efforts like Rebel News’ $58 avg. donations supporting 47 staff. He contrasts Hungary’s press freedom—despite Reuters Institute claims of state advertising shifts (e.g., Magyar Hirlap) and legal actions against Club Radio—to Canada’s Emergencies Act or Julian Assange’s imprisonment, arguing Orbán’s policies protect children from LGBT content. Trust in Hungarian media at 25% may reflect skepticism toward foreign-funded "dollar outlets" like Telex, not censorship, Levant insists, framing Hungary as freer than Western counterparts while promoting his crowdfunded investigative platform. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm still traveling on my mission to tell the truth about Hungary.
You can see all my reports at thetruthabouthungary.com.
But today, for the Ezra Levant show, I have two longer features.
The first, I was invited to be on a panel about media here at the Tushvanios Hungarian Festival.
I sat next to an MP, and we both talked about it.
That was fun.
And then I take you through a criticism of freedom of the press here in Hungary.
I read from one of the most vociferous critics of Viktor Orban and the Fidesz government, what they claim he's doing to infringe on press freedom.
I'll take you through word for word their report, and I'll give you my reaction.
That's all I had.
For those of you who are not yet subscribing to Rebel News Plus, let me encourage you to do so.
It's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, what is press freedom like in Hungary?
It's July 21st, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
I decided to go to Hungary, the country in Central Europe that was once dominated by the Nazis and then the Soviets, because I want to find the truth about the country.
It's a small country, just 10 million people.
And because the language is really inscrutable to most people, we don't really know what's going on other than through the lens of major mainstream media, like say the New York Times or the Washington Post.
It's just not a beat covered by smaller or independent players.
But I sense something was wrong because Hungary and its prime minister, Viktor Orban, are denounced and attacked by the mainstream media in the way that conservatives in the West are denounced and attacked.
But at least in that case, there is the other side of the story being told.
Not so much with Hungary.
And so we decided to tell the other side of the story.
And we went to Hungary and we set up a special website called thetruthabouthungary.com.
One of the truths we learned is that not all Hungarians are in Hungary proper because the country was chopped up in an international treaty about 100 years ago.
And there are many ethnic Hungarians in other countries, over 100,000 in neighboring Ukraine, for example, quite a few here in Romania, which is another country that borders Hungary.
And in fact, I'm here in Tushnad, if I'm pronouncing it right, because there is a ethnic Hungarian festival that attracts Hungarians from all over Romania.
And in fact, it's treated as a kind of outpost by Hungarian political leaders.
Orban himself will speak here tomorrow.
It's a fascinating mix.
I won't describe it again to you because I did another video on it.
It's part cultural festival, part food and music festival, part political conference.
And funny enough, I was invited to sit on a panel discussion about the media in 2023.
Now, I know a lot about the media in Canada, but I know very little about the media in Hungary, other than I saw some other journalists here at the conference, including a state broadcaster, which tells me that perhaps the Hungarian state broadcaster is not quite as left-wing as it is in Canada.
Anyways, I'm going to show you my contributions on the panel discussion.
I just gave a few remarks and they were well received.
And I talked with a Hungarian MP who was on the panel.
So I gave some of my thoughts.
Some of it was a report on how we're doing in Canada.
Someone some advice for Hungary and how they should approach a media that is, there's a domestic Hungarian media, but then there's a massive foreign-funded attack media, the funding either from Soros or believe it or not, the U.S. government.
So I'm going to do two parts to the show today.
The first will be my contributions to this media panel.
And frankly, I think you'll have heard some of it before in different monologues.
But then come right back because I did a bit of a deep dive into the criticisms of Orban and his treatment of the free press here.
And I want to take you through one particular report by a Western sort of media monitors, anti-disinformation, fact-check kind of NGO run by Reuters.
So you know where they're coming from.
So I attended this panel and I was quite pro-Hungary.
You'll detect that.
And obviously the Hungarian MP was pro-Hungary.
But I thought, okay, it behooves me to check what the critics are saying.
So come right back after the panel and I'm going to take you through a criticism of Hungary's freedom of the press and my reaction to it.
All right.
Here are my comments to a panel at the Tusvanyos Hungarian conference here in Romania.
Thanks very much.
Thank you for the invitation.
I'm Ezra Levan.
Citizen Journalists' Challenges00:03:12
I'm from Canada.
Some of you may have heard of our website called RebelNews.com.
We're based in Canada.
We also have a strong reporter at Australia and we've done work from the UK, the United States, and occasionally we go on adventures like we're doing right now in Hungary and Romania, the Netherlands, really anywhere around the world.
And our name rebel news suggests that we're outside the establishment, but we're not just outside the political and media establishment.
For example, our staff do not have journalism degrees.
We call it citizen journalists.
And so they may not have some of the professional polish, but what they lack is in professional credentials, they have in authenticity.
And I think that shows through.
And I think in this day and age of cynicism, people can respect a citizen journalist even more than a professional journalist, especially if they understand who funds it.
I think that these days, a lot of journalists are actually activists.
They're very politicized.
I understand recently the United States has sent $25 million to Hungary to prop up critical journalists on a mission, really, to attack the government.
And I think the source of funding is an essential part of their identity.
One of the challenges of being a citizen journalist is that it's hard.
The average donation to Rebel News is $58 Canadian, but we're able to support a staff of 47 people through lots and lots of $58 donations.
And while that means we're always asking our viewers for support and some of them get irritated, it's essential for that trust.
In Canada, you may have heard a few, a year ago, that in protest to the vaccine mandate and the lockdowns, there was a giant convoy of trucks that came to Ottawa, thousands of truckers.
It was a grassroots, leaderless movement.
All of the media condemned it as radical, racist.
They even said it was violent.
But our citizen journalists went out with just their little cell phones and filmed what was happening on the streets.
And we had hundreds of millions of views.
And really anyone who could hold a camera of all their phone is a journalist.
And that's, so we were rebelling against the journalistic establishment and the credentialization of media.
We were rebelling against the technology of media.
If you have a cell phone, you are a journalist.
Sure, you can upgrade a little bit, but you don't need to.
In fact, the rough quality of your work shows that you're authentic.
I believe that everyone is a pundit.
Everyone has a political point of view, but it's very valuable to be on the ground with a camera filming what actually happens.
That's the first link in the food chain for the pundits to talk over it.
So, for example, my colleague Lincoln and I, we set up a special crowdfunding website, thetruthabouthungary.com.
Government Payments Silence Journalists00:05:20
And we said, we're going to go to Hungary and tell the story that the mainstream media doesn't tell.
If you think that's important, please choose.
So we try and monetize every cost we have.
Let me, I don't want to take up too much time because I don't know how long you set aside for opening remarks.
Okay.
It's fascinating to me to learn about Hungary because it's difficult.
Hungarian is a very difficult language for people in North America to learn.
It doesn't feel similar to French giant Spanish.
So that makes it hard to understand.
Hungary is a small nation in terms of population, unlike Irish Americans or Italian Americans or Jews.
It's not a very large expat community in North America.
In fact, the most prominent Hungarian overseas is George Soros, who has a very particular point of view.
And so the combination of the language barrier, the lack of Western expat champions for Hungary makes it difficult to get primary information.
I think that's why people were excited in North America to crowdfund our little journey, just as an example.
And then you have the layer of what, and so there's criticism of Hungary in the Western media, but it's hard to double check it.
It's hard to validate or verify it because, again, of these barriers.
What's interesting is that one of the calumnies, one of the accusations against Hungary is that it's authoritarian, that it doesn't respect civil rights, including political dissent.
That's fascinating to me.
I have seen no evidence of that.
In fact, I've seen the opposite, and I've seen the undermining by the State Department funding of critical journalists is shocking.
And I did the math.
If he took $25 million for a country of 10 million people, imagine if Sri Derge had sent the same proportion to America.
That would be $750 million just to journalists in America to dig out dirt on Biden.
That would be a shocking, not only a violation of national sovereignty, but in a way that's undermining the free press because it's a kind of false journalist.
If you are a journalist with a particular political agenda, paid by a foreign power, you're not actually a journalist.
You dress like a journalist, you walk and talk like a journalist, but it's a kind of drag.
You're a drag queen journalist in a way.
And so I think that comes down to, so it's fascinating that they accuse Hungary of being authoritarian.
I don't see it, but they use tactics against Hungary that I think are sketchy.
My prime minister in Canada, Justin Trudeau, holds himself out to be a champion of civil liberties.
But he invoked a form of martial law to repel the trucker convoy.
This hogboy I mentioned of all the trucks.
He brought in a kind of martial law called the Emergencies Act.
He jailed activists, peaceful activists for weeks.
He seized hundreds of personal bank accounts without legal process.
That sounds authoritarian.
And the temerity of him to criticize Hungary is shocking to me.
But let me tell you what it's like in closing to be a kind of rebel journalist in Canada.
Because I understand here in Hungary, the media is fairly balanced, critics and supporters.
I understand that the state broadcaster is here to cover this event, which suggests they're open-minded.
But Victor Orban's not going to live forever.
And one day, Fidege will not be in power.
That may seem unthinkable to you now, but one day you will be the opposition, the critics, the contrarians.
And so these levers of the state, the state broadcaster and other institutions, may fall into the hands of people who do strangle rest for you.
In my country of Canada, Trudeau is gradually encroaching on the media.
He's colonizing them by giving them government payments, which makes them less likely to criticize him.
And he's starting to bring in a system of licensing called the Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization.
It's a license.
You have to apply to the government for a form of license.
And if you don't get it, you lack certain civil liberties.
And obviously, rebel news applied and we were rejected.
It's shocking to me that Canada would criticize Hungary when that's what we're doing back home.
But if I had one message or lesson for Hungary and for those who care about the media and who understand how the media is so deeply linked to politics, it would be this.
Prepare now for when you are in the wilderness, for when you are exiled from political power.
Prepare for Censorship00:16:03
Prepare now for when you no longer have some of the access and financing you may have.
And we had to build our company in a very difficult way because we were censored and silenced by advertisers.
We were deplatformed.
We were canceled because we were supportive of Donald Trump, for example, but not even over the top.
We just showed what he said.
YouTube turned off their ads, costing us more than a million dollars a year.
Then we were critical of vaccine mandates.
So then YouTube turned off something called Super Chats, which is like a donation.
That costs us another $400,000 a year.
So how did we survive when we were blacklisted and cut off and censored?
Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say.
And if I had one piece of advice for Hungarians who want their own voices told, who want to tell their own stories, whether it's culturally or politically as we do, it would be this.
Build a direct connection with your viewers.
And I believe the crowdfunding model, which we have built by necessity, is a life raft that you will need when they finally sink your battleship.
And there is nothing that our enemies can do to stop us because we have a direct connection with actually more than 1 million people.
We have 4 million people in our database, 1 million active users of our emails that we send emails to, and hundreds of thousands of individual gifts, average size $58.
So there's no boss who can phone me up and say, kill that story on, we did a story on George Soros the other day.
We did the story on the House of Terror Museum, and we spoke very bluntly about the communists.
But there's no one who can call me up and say, kill that story, fire that person, because we have no single person who gives us more than 1% of our money.
And so using the tools that are almost free, like I don't know what they're called in Hungary, but where I come from, there's a lot of different mail services, constant contact, mail chip.
There's different services that you can use to build up a list.
But let me give you one key part of that.
You must own your own data.
You must have those names because you want to be able to survive the cancellation that comes to you when you offend a power that be.
Let me close with an example of that.
One day, PayPal cut us off.
We did millions of dollars of donations through PayPal.
We were a preferred customer.
And then one day they shut us down.
We had all our data.
We had the names of our customers, and we had to move to another credit card processor.
Prepare now for when that happens.
I know I'm sounding apocalyptic.
I'm sounding defensive, and I'm sounding like I am in a battle.
In Canada, I am.
It's ironic that I'm here in Hungary or Romania, a place with freedom of the press, and I'm coming from a country that holds itself out to be civil rights oriented, and yet at home I'm censored.
But my message to you would be, each of you can be a journalist.
If you have a phone and a social media account, that's the start of it.
And then if you capture the names and email addresses of your supporters, just ask for it.
Have a petition to build it up.
And if you do that, over the course of time, you will eventually rival what I call the legacy media or the regime media.
And all the things that they will chastise you for, that you're just a citizen, you're not a professional, that you just use your cell phone and not a fancy camera, that you ask for donations.
Those are the things that make you strong and in the long term, stronger than men.
So in closing, let me just look at my notes.
I would say Hungary, despite what the foreign critics say, is actually a wonderful place to be a journalist today.
I fear that that won't always be the case because the forces that Hungary is up against are actually forces of censorship and they're trying to censor and cancel Hungary itself.
They're trying to censor and cancel your prime minister.
If they would do that to your prime minister, they would do that to you.
But you can build your grassroots systems hardened for the battle to come because it is a battle of ideas.
And in Hungary's case, it's a battle for your very identity.
Thank you for including me.
And I look forward to learning more about Hungary because that's what I'm here to do.
Thanks for including me on the panel.
All right, so those were my comments to the media panel.
I'm not sure what you think of them.
I think you probably heard me say those things before.
The MP talked about what he called the dollar media, which are these foreign-funded attack organizations that are basically, I said they were like in drag pretending to be journalists, but basically they were foreign-funded attack political war rooms to take down Viktor Orban.
They haven't succeeded yet, but one day they just might.
But in fairness, because there was no Soros Soros outpost, because there was no critic on the panel, I was curious, what would the critics of that MP and of Viktor Orban have said were they on the panel?
And so I started poking around on the internet.
And again, it's difficult because I don't speak Hungarian and it's not an easy language to crack.
But I came upon this study by nothing less than the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, co-sponsored by the University of Oxford.
I mean, it just doesn't get more blue ribbon than that.
And this was a criticism of Hungary and of Orban and the Fidesh Party in particular, alleging that they do not support civil liberties.
Now, I should say I have seen no infringements of civil liberties in my time in Hungary, or obviously here in Romania, but that doesn't mean that much because how would I know if it was going on?
How would I know what was happening outside my field of vision?
And how would I know what's going on in a language I don't speak?
So reading this Reuters Institute critique of Hungary was probably the most concentrated objection I could find.
And I'd like to take you through it right now because I think it's actually quite incredible.
I want to tell you, by the way, that I deeply believe in freedom of speech.
And there are some kinds of legal censorship in Hungary that I'm not particularly comfortable with.
For example, I understand that an anti-Semitic Hungarian guard movement was banned and that their criticisms of the Jewish community is illegal.
Now, I'm obviously Jewish and I don't like criticism of the Jewish community or promoting hatred.
I don't like that.
But I believe that even haters should have freedom of speech.
So that's an example of an act of censorship that I've heard about in Hungary that I'm not comfortable with.
But really what I want to know is, are they censoring journalism?
Are they censoring criticisms of Orban?
And that's what this study purports to do.
So let's jump right in.
It's a study of Hungary by Judith Skazaks and Eva Bognar.
Following the landslide victory of the ruling Fidesh party in April 2022, leading to a fourth consecutive term for Viktor Orban as prime minister, many media outlets have started downsizing with some major titles ceasing print publication.
Okay, let me just start right there.
They're implying that that's a political consequence, but I come from Canada and newspapers and websites shut down in Canada all the time because newspapers are dying.
TV and radio stations are dying.
Everyone's getting things on the internet.
I don't really think that's related to Orban, but let me continue.
In the Hungarian media market, 2022 was a turbulent year.
With runaway inflation, cost-cutting measures were introduced by many media companies.
Following the elections, pro-government media conglomerate, Kezma, the owner of over 400 titles, closed some of its smaller publications, downsized staffing at several others, and ended the print publication of major titles, including long-running finance daily Vilagdažag, the weekly Figieleo, launched in 1958, and patriotic tabloid Repost.
And forgive me for mispronouncing all of those.
It sold Victor Orban's favorite newspaper, sports daily Nemzeti Sport, to the state, and in early 2023 merged its opinion portal with another.
Pro-government broadsheet Magyar Herlap, published since 1968, went online only, while government-friendly television channel Pesti TV folded.
Several media outlets not clearly aligned with the government have also cut costs.
Weekly 168 Aura and free Pesti Herlap ceased print publication and news portal Azonale.hu owned by an opposition MP closed.
On the plus side, RTL and TB2 both launched new online streaming platforms respectively with exclusive content for subscribers.
So what I see here is that media across the ideological spectrum are closing for economic reasons, just like in Canada, the United States, or anywhere else in the world.
But look how they frame it.
The closure of media outlets just after the elections suggests a view of the media as a political instrument.
It also signals a shift towards social media used by 61% in Hungary in Fidesh's media strategy.
Megaphone Center, a conservative social media incubator that trains pro-government influencers and promotes their posts, has been pushing the government's narratives to Hungarian Facebook users' feeds.
Megaphone was also one of the biggest spenders on political ads on Facebook in the election campaign, urging citizens to vote for Fidesz.
It claims to be funded by private donors.
Okay, well, I would have another explanation, which is that the election is a time when a lot of people care about political news.
They're going to consume it.
And once the election is over, maybe they just don't care about election news anymore.
And that, you know, it's not the business case.
I just don't see how closing of both government and opposition newspapers is a sign that something political is afoot.
I noticed they talk about some influencers online, but they don't mention Soros, by far the largest funder of influencers.
But let's keep going.
So far, so boring.
But they have to come up with some mud to sling against Hungary.
So let me tell you what they say.
Yet traditional media are also seen as playing an important role in the 2022 Fidesh election victory.
The OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights Election Monitoring mission reported that, quote, the pervasive bias in the news and current events programs of the majority of broadcasters monitored, combined with extensive government advertising campaigns, provided the ruling party with an undue advantage, unquote.
Okay, so they're saying that there is bias in the media and that there are advertising campaigns and that's not fair.
That could be.
I think bias in the media is unfair, but I see bias in the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the CBC, and frankly every single media that I look at.
In North America, I don't think it's disputed that the vast majority of the media are on the left.
And for those on the right, you know, and on the left, let there be opinions.
I don't think you can say that there's a violation of civil liberties because people have an opinion.
I'm just waiting.
I'm halfway through this article and I'm waiting for the meet.
And I'll get to some examples.
State advertising continues to distort the media market, channeling public funds to pro-government media and starving independent outlets of advertising revenue.
Four independent weeklies are planning to sue the government over discriminatory ad purchasing.
Now, that's very interesting to me because I've been the president of Rebel News for almost nine years and we have never, not once, received an ad from the government of Canada.
Never once.
Maybe I should take a page from these folks and sue Justin Trudeau and demand my fair share.
I don't know.
It's an idea.
But if that's the discrimination they claim about, I suppose we have it in Canada too.
Now this next paragraph to me shows just the bad faith of Hungary's critics.
But do you agree with me that so far there is no proof by this Western-funded NGO that civil liberties and the freedom of the press is in danger yet?
Would you agree with me that closing newspapers is something happening all around the world?
That their only evidence so far is that both government and opposition media are closing.
And the worst thing they've come up with so far is that the government doesn't spend ad money in all media.
Well, the same back in home.
But let me read you this next paragraph and you'll see something that I found shocking.
In July, the European Commission took the government to court over the Media Council's 2021 decision to force one of the last independent radio stations, Club Radio, off the air.
Hungary's oldest community radio, Telos Radio, nearly faced the same fate when the authority refused to renew its license.
After a three-week hiatus, Telos Radio was back on air in September.
The Commission also referred Hungary to court over the 2021 law that bans content promoting homosexuality to minors.
So let's stop for a second.
Well, in both Canada and the United States, more so in Canada, the government regulator has the power to license or de-license radio stations.
You'll remember the very famous case in Canada of Radio X, Schwa FM, in Quebec that had views that the government didn't like, so they censored them.
The government censor the CRTC in Canada shut down Howard Stern, shut down Dr. Laura.
Anything conservative or too funny or too rambunctious is censored by Canada's CRTC.
So again, I don't like it.
It sounds like one of the radio stations in Hungary got their license back, but the criticisms here apply in Canada just as much.
In fact, in Canada, they're bringing in the QCJO news license.
I don't think they're doing that in Hungary.
But that second part, that the European Union is suing Hungary over what?
What's the censorship they're mad about?
A law banning, quote, content promoting homosexuality to minors.
Well, you shouldn't be promoting any sexuality to minors.
This is Viktor Orban's law against the LGBT2QSL plus movement that is storming its way through schools in Canada, the United States, UK.
It's basically Hungary's decision to keep sexuality as an adult matter.
There was Pride Week in Hungary the other day.
They're allowed a parade, just not in kindergarten drag queen library school book readings.
Imagine, though, the chutzpah of the European Union suing Hungary, a sovereign country, for both of these things, for closing a radio station and for banning pornography to minors.
It's an astonishing reminder that the European Union is a kind of empire ruling over Hungary.
Hungary's Media Freedom00:07:09
And that pricks Hungarians because they've been part of different empires over the years, from the Austria-Hungary Empire to the Ottoman Empire to the Nazi Empire to the Soviet Empire.
And I don't think they've liked any of them very much.
I'm going to read a little bit more.
This is interesting and it was alluded to in the panel discussion.
Media ownership and funding were dominant topics in public debate.
Following revelations that the opposition parties may have received campaign funds from abroad, government politicians, the pro-government media, and influencers launched smear campaigns against independent media outlets that have received foreign funding.
These media outlets, including Telex and Atlaso, are labeled dollar media and are accused of serving, quote, foreign interests.
Okay, so if they have received foreign money and the government says you receive foreign money, how is that a civil liberties crisis?
How is that anything other than being accurate?
I mean, I suppose if you're calling any of your opponents foreign-funded and they're not, maybe that's mean and maybe that's, I don't know, a defamation action if they have that in Hungary.
But if they really are foreign-funded, and if they really are doing the bidding of their foreign masters, how is it improper in any way for the Hungarian media to call them out?
I call the CBC Justin Trudeau's state broadcaster all the time because they are.
Maybe that's mean, but it's true.
It sounds like not only does Hungary have to battle their own left-wing media, but they have to battle carpetbaggers, fake journalists who are just doing their bidding of foreign masters, obviously including Soros.
This next one is interesting.
They're trying to tag Orban, who's a NATO member who has given aid to Ukraine, who has taken Ukrainian migrants.
Here's what they say about that.
Reporting on Russia's war in Ukraine has been controversial, with many seeing Hungary as, quote, the EU capital of Russian disinformation.
Although the media authority found that major television channels reported on the war objectively, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and think tank political capital filed a complaint with the European Commission.
They went to Tattle the Mummy, claiming that the public media kept citing Russian propaganda channels, RT and Sputnik, even after they were banned in the EU.
So let's stop there for a minute.
So they said that the major broadcasters were objective and even-handed in covering the war.
That, by the way, is a lot more than we get in Canada, the United States, I should say.
But their one complaint is they actually, from time to time, it sounds like, quoted the Russian side of the story.
Not unbalanced.
You heard them say it was balanced, but from time to time, they allowed RT, which is a Soviet state, Russian state broadcaster, or Sputnik, which is the same.
The Civil Liberties Union complained that those news outlets were not banned.
What?
And you're tattling to the European Commission, which is incredible.
But let me just say that a third time.
The Civil Liberties Union wants journalists banned that the Fidej government and Viktor Orban have not banned.
I don't think they are allowed to call themselves a civil liberties union anymore if they are the ones calling for censorship and Orban is the one resisting.
That's crazy to me.
With public discussions of the dollar media and Russian disinformation, it is not surprising that trust in news has decreased to just 25%.
Hungary now ranks 45 out of the 46 country in the digital news report, whoever they are.
Not only has trust decreased, but drop was registered in most media outlets' reach, though some of it may be related to the change in survey methodology.
Once independent, now pro-government index.hu and independent24.hu remain the top online news sources, now followed by pro-government or rigo.hu.
In its second full year of operation, Independent Telex is the fourth most often used online news source, et cetera, et cetera.
And that's basically the end of the story with some charts.
But I think that it may be because of Viktor Orban and Fidej that people don't trust foreign media anymore, Hungarian media anymore.
Or it may be, as this report itself says, that the foreign media are indeed funded.
So the Hungarian media are indeed funded by foreign actors.
If there was suddenly a huge news enterprise in Canada, as big as the Globe and Mail, say, or if there was suddenly a new TV channel in America, as big as CNN, and they were constantly attacking the government, and you found out they were funded by a foreign country, you'd be appalled.
Of course you wouldn't trust the media.
In fact, you'd go further.
In Canada, of course, the CRTC banned RT, banned Russia today.
I'm not sure if it's banned in America.
I think the First Amendment protected it.
But everything they've accused Viktor Orban of doing is something that Justin Trudeau or Western European countries have done.
Taking licenses away, banning media they don't like.
And what they've done in Hungary, funding critical media, They're outraged that people don't trust the media anymore.
Let me close this way.
The reason I read this to you is this was the most comprehensive, most deeply researched, and most partisan attack on Viktor Orban and the Fidej government I could find from the other side.
This is the accusation.
This is the case for the prosecution that Viktor Orban and Fidesh violate civil liberties and don't support freedom of the press.
But in fact, a plain reading of this report, and I read to you every word of it, a plain reading of this report says that in fact the government supports freedom of the press, allows journalists in, whether they're funded by George Soros or Vladimir Putin.
That despite that, the media here is objective and that newspapers indeed are closing, but they're closing all around the spectrum as they are in the West.
And if only we had some of the freedom they had in Hungary, like a regulator that allows controversial licensees on radio or that can be sued for not advertising with its critics.
I don't know.
I didn't know that much about the Hungarian media when I was on the panel, but now that I read the case against it, I'm pretty sure that Hungary has a freer media than, oh, I don't know, the UK and Julian Assange in prison or Canada arresting people they don't like and shooting our reporter, Alexa Lavoie.
What do you think?
Do you think that Hungary's media is freer than ours in Canada?
Let me know.
Send me an email to ezra at rebelnews.com.
That's the end of the show for today.
All of our covers from Hungary can be found at thetruthabouthungary.com.