Part I — Situation overview

On 10 August 2026 444.hu described in several articles how the press conferences of the former foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, were organised at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Citing the accounts of former and current ministry staff, the paper writes: the Minister’s Cabinet indicated in a letter to the heads of the organisational units how many staff were expected to attend each event. The heads had to submit the names of participants in advance. Employees had to take their seats half an hour before the start in the conference room seating 50–60 people, and according to the accounts they could not stand up until the minister had left the room. Where there were not enough volunteers, designation followed; in several units staff were assigned on a rotation. The event was at times over-organised: it happened that staff sent over from other buildings during working hours were informed on the spot that the room was full and they could go back to work. Independent newsrooms were typically not invited at all; according to one source of the paper there was an occasion when a single journalist was present, the correspondent of the Hungarian News Agency (MTI). By the newsroom’s own account it obtained the documents after three years, an enforcement procedure and a criminal complaint.

The story also has a reading from the other side, and it is important to take it seriously. On the same day 24.hu published in full the explanation of a former press chief of the ministry. According to this, participation was not compulsory, the aim of the protocol was to show respect for the foreign guest — so that they would not have to speak in front of an empty room — and the heads of the professional units themselves also considered it useful for the staff member responsible for the region to hear the partner country’s minister live. The same account records that in the last four-year cycle the ministry sent out 2,560 press releases, and that press conferences were broadcast live, which is why MTI rarely sent a correspondent; the person speaking firmly denies that questions were agreed in advance. The two narratives differ less in the facts than in the characterisation: both say that the room was filled with ministry staff, and both say that independent newsrooms were not present — the dispute is about whether this was protocol courtesy or staged publicity.

MIAK’s reading is that this difference is a regulatory question, not one of conscience. As long as there is no written order, identical for every ministry, on who may be invited to a public-authority press event, whether anyone may ask a question there, and what is published afterwards, there is no line that can be drawn between good-faith protocol and the creation of appearances — both look the same on the recording. Moreover, the weight of the case is not given by the chairs but by the fact that the documents behind it could be accessed only at the price of a three-year legal struggle: freedom of information today does not prevail as a default but by way of enforcement. These two gaps — a uniform procedure for press events and the predictable handling of data requests — can recur in the same way under any government, and therefore both need a rule that binds the present government as well.

Part II — Literature foundation

The case can be described with three complementary theoretical frames. Edward Bernays (Austrian-born American public relations practitioner, founder of the methodology of modern opinion formation) describes in his 1928 book Propaganda exactly the technique we see here: the modern persuader does not assert something directly but “creates circumstances” — stages an event whose mere occurrence carries the message. The work of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky (American economist and linguist respectively, analysts of the economic structure of the mass media), Manufacturing Consent, explains the other side: newsrooms are tied by economic necessity to the large official sources, because those provide the reliable, scheduled flow of news — which is why the system can persist even when everyone is aware of it. And the basic thesis of Marshall McLuhan’s (Canadian media theorist) Understanding Media — the medium is the message — answers why it was worth filling the room even though the camera showed the minister throughout: the full room was not addressed to the viewer but to the guest present and to the apparatus itself. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

📖 Source: Edward Bernays: Propaganda; Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent; Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures. All three are procedural in character, and all three bind the present government in the same way as any later one — this is the test of the value of the package.

3.1 A uniform government press event protocol (within 60 days)

MIAK proposes that the Government adopt a uniform procedural order for public-authority press events covering every ministry, with four compulsory elements. The first is open accreditation: any newsroom should be able to apply for the press event, and a refusal should have to be communicated in writing with reasons — this element alone ends filtering by invitation. The second is the right to ask questions: it should be fixed in advance how many questions may be asked, and that the selection of questioners is not at the discretion of the organising body. The third is presence transparency: after the event it should be published what circles the participants came from — how many press representatives, how many delegation members, how many ministry staff. The fourth is publication of the full recording, uncut. The protocol does not prohibit official presence, nor does it need to: if the number is public, the question answers itself. The A7 media pluralism as an institutional guarantee programme point already formulates this requirement at the institutional level; the present proposal translates it into a rule of daily operation.

3.2 Requiring a professional justification for official participation (in the next review of civil service regulations)

The disputed point was whether participation was an order or a request. MIAK proposes that this question should not depend on later recollection: the internal regulations applying to civil servants should fix that a staff member may be called upon during working hours as a participant in a press or protocol event only if their participation is connected to their duties, and that the request to participate must state in writing that it is not compulsory. The rule does not make event organisation harder; it protects the official — according to the principle of the KI7 official selection and rotation system programme point, the civil servant stands in a professional role, not as a political prop. This requirement moreover has a measurable benefit: official working time is thus not spent on representation, which is also a gain from the point of view of the KI3 measurable reduction of bureaucracy programme point.

3.3 A deadline-bound route for refused freedom-of-information requests (from 1 January 2027)

The gravest element of the story is not the filling of the chairs but that three years passed until the documents were released. MIAK proposes that the measurement and publicity of the handling of freedom-of-information requests become systematic: every ministry should publish quarterly a one-page report on how many data requests it received, how many it fulfilled, how many it refused, and what the average handling time was. And in the case of refusal there should be a fast, deadline-bound review route at the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (NAIH) — not instead of the judicial route but placed before it, so that manifestly unfounded refusals do not end up in litigation lasting years. The A5 whistleblower system programme point follows the same logic in another area: enforcement works when there is a cheap and fast first stage.

The three proposals are held together by a single principle: publicity depends not on goodwill but on procedure. According to Bernays’s description, the instrument of persuasion is the staging of circumstances; if we fix the conditions of the circumstances in advance and for everyone, then there is no room left for staging. Herman and Chomsky’s analysis shows that newsrooms cannot by themselves force access, because they are at the mercy of the source — which is why the rule has to be drawn on the source’s side. Open accreditation, presence transparency and measured handling of data requests together give a system in which the creation of appearances is not prohibited but simply pointless: it shows immediately.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Society Government information provision becomes verifiable: after publication of the uncut recording and the composition of those present, the reader can decide for themselves what the event is worth Formal compliance with the publication obligation — the recording goes up, but the right to ask questions is hollowed out; the public gets a false sense of security
Public administration Officials’ time is freed up for professional tasks; putting participation requests in writing ends later disputes about what was compulsory Additional administrative burden at the smaller ministries; a strict rule may also push back legitimate professional presence if organisers choose the safer route
Foreign policy A predictable order for bilateral press events is also a signal towards partner countries: the guest does not become a stage prop in a domestic political message Protocol flexibility decreases; with partners of a different diplomatic culture open accreditation may require explanation

The main question to weigh in the package is how far the legitimate room for manoeuvre of government communication extends. Every government has the right — indeed the duty — to inform effectively: to write press releases, organise events, formulate messages. The line runs where the form of the information provision itself asserts something untrue: where the room is full not because there is interest but so that it should look like interest. This line cannot be drawn on the basis of intent, because intent cannot be proved — publishing the composition of those present, by contrast, makes the fact rather than the intent verifiable, and that is enough. The proposal tips to the risk side if the regulation were to extend to content: if anyone began to prescribe what a minister may say at their press conference, that would no longer be transparency but interference pointing in the other direction. MIAK’s proposal therefore moves exclusively on the side of access and publication.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (proposed KPIs)

The fulfilment of the proposals is shown by the performance indicators (KPIs) below. These are proposals, not government decisions — MIAK recommends them for tracking.

  • 6 months: how many ministries have published their own press event order containing open accreditation (target: all of them).
  • 12 months: for what percentage of government press events an uncut recording and a presence summary are available.
  • 12 months: the average handling time of freedom-of-information requests by ministry, and the proportion of refusals — it is worth tracking the dispersion too, because that reveals where there is a procedural problem.
  • 24 months: how many data request cases reached the judicial stage compared with the previous year; a decrease signals that the fast review route is working.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s request to the decision-maker is concrete: adopt a press event protocol covering every ministry, with open accreditation, presence transparency and an uncut recording, and make the handling of freedom-of-information requests measurable. And it asks the public not to read this case as a personal scandal. The question is not what a former minister did; the question is whether the same could be repeated tomorrow — and the answer at present is yes, because there is no rule that would prevent it.

The proposal engages two MIAK foundational values. Transparency is engaged because this was not about concealing information in the classical sense: the press conferences went out in live broadcast, the releases were sent — and yet the structure of publicity was staged, and that is precisely what nobody saw. Transparency in this case does not mean additional information but making the mode of production of the information visible. And being ideology-free is engaged because the value of the proposal is measured by one thing only: whether the present government is willing to apply to itself the standard it demands with regard to its predecessor’s practice. A rule that applies only retroactively is not a rule but a verdict.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The left-liberal band carried the story, and its framing was directed at institutional operation. Of 444.hu’s two articles, one described the mechanism in detail, the other made the route of access — that is, the three-year legal procedure itself — the subject of the story; this second framing is the more interesting, because it puts not the scandal but the state of freedom of information at the centre. The follow-up articles of HVG and Telex reported the facts factually, and Telex separately highlighted that the participants did not necessarily have any connection with the subject area of the topic.

The public affairs band brought the most important addition: 24.hu was the one that also published the full, multi-paragraph explanation of the ministry’s former press chief. From MIAK’s point of view this editorial decision is exemplary — without the full publication of the counter-argument the reader could not weigh how much is protocol routine and how much is deliberate creation of appearances.

The conservative band did not carry the topic on this day as a question of press freedom. Mandiner published an article on the personal continuity of the foreign affairs apparatus — that is, on the fact that certain figures of the earlier ministry leadership also obtained roles in the new set-up — which is another cross-section of the same institution but does not touch the press handling practice. This difference in framing itself signals why it is not enough to rely on the self-regulation of the public sphere: the spectrum of the press does not deal with equal weight with the procedural questions burdening its own side of the day, and precisely for that reason the rule has to be drawn on the side of the authority. Finally, Telex’s report of 9 August deserves mention, that the KDNP is looking through a public call for its candidate to be nominated to the Media Council (the members of the Media Council are elected by the National Assembly with a two-thirds majority) — this is an example pointing in the procedural direction with the opposite sign: open selection can also be chosen voluntarily.

6.2 Facts and data

Datum Value Source
Capacity of the conference room 50–60 people 444.hu, 10 August 2026
Compulsory arrival before the start 30 minutes 444.hu, 10 August 2026
Rotation frequency at some units according to accounts about every two weeks 444.hu, 10 August 2026
Time elapsed until the documents were obtained 3 years, after an enforcement procedure and a criminal complaint 444.hu, 10 August 2026
Number of press releases sent out in the last four-year cycle 2,560 statement of the ministry’s former press chief, 24.hu, 10 August 2026
Number of daily press events according to the person speaking 2–3 on average, 5–6 on a harder day statement of the ministry’s former press chief, 24.hu, 10 August 2026

The 2,560 press releases is a telling figure in itself, and it was part not of the accusation but of the defence: the person speaking explained the rarity of MTI’s on-site reporting by the fact that the ministry issued a release about every event, which the news agency took over. From a policy point of view, however, it is precisely this sentence that shows the essence of the mechanism: if the source of the news flow is the body concerned itself, and on-site presence becomes superfluous, then the possibility of asking questions also disappears — not because of a prohibition but because of the structure of the process.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the institutional guarantees of media pluralism, indicators for measuring the manipulation of publicity, and speeding up reporting and alert channels;
  • Culture (programme points) — the continuous monitoring of media pluralism and the media literacy programme, which enables the reader to distinguish staged from genuine publicity;
  • Public administration and e-government (programme points) — protecting the professional character of the official role and the measurable use of official working time;
  • Foreign policy (programme points) — the transparent order of bilateral press events and the delimitation of legitimate strategic communication from the creation of appearances.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Edward Bernays: Propaganda

Bernays’s 1928 book is not an exposé but a professional handbook: the author starts from the position that in modern mass society persuasion works not through argument but through the transformation of the decision environment. As he writes: “The modern propagandist therefore sets to work to create circumstances which will modify that custom.” Bernays’s own example is almost a textbook parallel to the present case: he sold pianos not by advertising the piano but by making the idea of the music room accepted — he organised an exhibition, invited well-known figures, and the event character of the visit carried the message. Elsewhere the book also sums up the method: the effect is achieved through “the creation of circumstances, the highlighting of significant events and the presentation of important questions”.

In the case of the foreign ministry press conferences, then, the filled room was not a by-product but the communication itself. The message was not what the minister said but that many people were curious about it — and this message could not be refuted, because it was not uttered as a sentence. This is precisely what gives the direction of MIAK’s proposal: against such a communication what protects is not the word but the publicity of the structure. If, under point 3.1, it has to be published how many came from the press and how many from the ministry, then the “created circumstance” describes itself, and ceases to be a message.

📖 Source: Edward Bernays: Propaganda

The third filter of Herman and Chomsky’s analysis is about news sources, and it describes exactly the structural dependence that also operated in the Hungarian case. According to the authors “the mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest”: newsrooms have daily deadlines, they cannot keep a reporter everywhere, and therefore they concentrate their resources where regular press conferences are held. The book quotes Mark Fishman’s formulation of this — “the principle of bureaucratic affinity: only other bureaucracies can satisfy the input needs of a news bureaucracy” — and adds that news editors are inclined to treat officials’ statements as fact from the outset, because the professional division of labour assumes that “officials ought to know what it is their job to know”.

In the Hungarian case this explains how a practice of which most of the profession knew could persist for years. The ministry did not conceal the information but flooded the market with it: alongside more than two and a half thousand press releases and live broadcasts, on-site presence became economically irrational for newsrooms. Access was thus narrowed not by prohibition but through the structure of the news flow. From this it follows for MIAK that no solution can be expected from the self-regulation of newsrooms: whoever depends on the source cannot force the transparency of the source. The open accreditation proposed in point 3.1 therefore fixes an obligation on the side of the authority, not of the press.

📖 Source: Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent

6.4.3 Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media

McLuhan’s basic thesis — “the medium is the message” — rests on the recognition that the social effect of a form of communication is determined not by the content transmitted in it but by the form itself, because that shapes the scale and pattern of human relations. The author also adds what is most important here: “it is typical that the ‘content’ of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium” — that is, while we attend to the content, it is precisely the form that remains unnoticed.

The message of the press conference as a medium is that a holder of public power gives an account before the public, and the public asks questions. If the form remains but the possibility of questioning disappears, then the message of the medium becomes a lie — regardless of whether the minister tells the truth in substance. This also explains the element of the situation that is at first sight incomprehensible: according to the paper’s account, during the broadcasts the camera showed the minister and their guest throughout, so the full room did not even reach the viewer. The expenditure was nonetheless rational — the form was addressed not to the distant viewer but to the guest sitting in the room and to the organisation itself. MIAK’s proposal therefore regulates not the content but the form: the uncut recording and the presence summary make visible what has so far been left out of the broadcast.

📖 Source: Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media

6.5 International comparison

The order of government press events rests in several European democracies on unwritten custom, but where it has been put in writing, the same three elements typically feature: accreditation is open and challengeable, the selection of questioners is not at the free discretion of the organising body, and the full recording is available afterwards. The daily press briefings of the EU institutions are a usable model from this point of view: accreditation is regulated, the recordings remain in an archive, and the spokesperson has no right to refuse a question from an accredited journalist.

On the freedom-of-information side, international practice offers two solutions that could also be adopted at home. One is the deadline-bound first stage: in several countries there is a supervisory body that reviews a refused data request within a short, fixed deadline, and only after that does the judicial route open — so that manifestly unfounded refusals do not tie up court capacity for years. The other is compulsory statistics: the bodies themselves report how many requests they received and how long they took to handle them. The second has a disciplining effect in itself, because it makes the performance of individual ministries comparable — MIAK proposes introducing this first, because it can be done without a legislative amendment, at the level of a government decision.

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A7 — Media pluralism as an institutional guarantee
  • A9 — Spin-dictatorship prevention index
  • A13 — Disinformation resilience
  • A5 — Whistleblower system

Culture

  • KU2 — Media pluralism monitoring
  • KU7 — Disinformation resilience and media literacy programme

Public administration and e-government

  • KI7 — Official selection and rotation system
  • KI3 — Measurable reduction of bureaucracy

Foreign policy

  • KP3 — Transparent foreign policy
  • KP16 — Foreign policy information advantage strategy

Proposed new programme point: A uniform government press event protocol — for the Transparency and anti-corruption policy area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 10 August 2026 — topic 4):

Knowledge-base references (books):

  • 📖 Edward Bernays: Propaganda
  • 📖 Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent
  • 📖 Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media

Note: the local file path of the books does not appear in the visible text of the blog — only the author and the title. The file path is an internal matter of the generation process, not the reader’s.

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A5, A7, A9, A13)
  • MIAK policy area: Culture (programme points; programme point ID: KU2, KU7)
  • MIAK policy area: Public administration and e-government (programme points; programme point ID: KI3, KI7)
  • MIAK policy area: Foreign policy (programme points; programme point ID: KP3, KP16)
  • MIAK press monitor, 10 August 2026 — topic 4, score: 87/100

Additional public data sources (where used):

  • NAIH annual reports — statistics on freedom-of-information requests
  • Media Pluralism Monitor (CMPF) — media pluralism risk indicators
  • Reporters Without Borders — press freedom index

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