“Come on, it’s a pious lie, it’s no big deal”-Hungarian State News Agency editor said to former correspondent

For years, a single directive from one of the editors was enough to have foreign politicians' critical statements about Viktor Orbán or Fidesz disappear, to keep the names of certain Transylvanian public figures out of the news, or to have a news report await government approval for hours. While Hungarian public media undergoes a complete overhaul, a recently published report revealed-through hundreds of examples-how politically motivated communication reshaped the reality conveyed by the Hungarian News Agency, MTI in recent years. We spoke with Árpád Gazda, MTI’s former correspondent from Transylvania, about how “pious lies” made their way into the news, what it meant if a topic was designated as being “subject to prior approval”, and how all of this distorted the information available to the Hungarian public.