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Tamás Bodoky: Honorable Court!
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Our personal rights lawsuit against the Sovereignty Protection Office continued today. The proceedings are not only about the reputation of our newspaper, but also about all independent media and civil society organizations in Hungary, which are threatened to be blacklisted and made impossible with the so-called “transparency” bill. The court today heard the plaintiff’s legal representative, who prepared the following brief presentation – in response to the judge’s questions, this is not exactly what was said in the courtroom, but something similar.
The mission and activities of Átlátszó serve the interests of the country and the public interest: we work to promote freedom of information and, through investigative journalism, make the operation of elected officials and the powers that be more transparent to Hungarian voters. Átlátszó does not accept commissions and does not represent the interests of another country or other alleged commissioners: articles are prepared based on the autonomous decisions of our journalists and editors, who consider the public interest and relevance of the topic.
The financing of Átlátszó is transparent: in our annual financial reports and on our website, we disclose in detail, in more detail than required by law, the sources from which our revenues come. We also consider transparency important for ourselves: our problem is not that the Sovereignty Protection Office demands transparency, but that it places the data we voluntarily provide in a false, stigmatizing and discrediting context.
We do not receive assignments from Átlátszó’s foreign institutional funders, but rather we apply with our own ideas, concepts, and present our activities to organizations that are committed to supporting public service, investigative journalism, and press freedom. We are proud to successfully apply to prestigious organizations for support.
In response to the Sovereignty Protection Office’s request, we replied that since we are neither a political party nor a nominating organization, nor do we exercise public authority, we do not cooperate with them. In accordance with the Electoral Procedure Act, “activity aimed at influencing the will of voters” means political campaigning activities in party political or local government political matters, and Átlátszó does not engage in such activities. Therefore, we could only share information with the Office that we would provide to anyone else upon request.
The Sovereignty Protection Office then compiled a seriously defamatory and unlawful report, practically based on the data we voluntarily published and the conspiracy theories woven around it, in which it makes unfounded claims about our supporters and makes extremely serious accusations against Átlátszó.
The office formulated these accusations against us as a state agency, therefore lent them the authority of the Hungarian state.
The office then spread these accusations in the media: it issued a press release, which was also distributed by the official state news agency. It made numerous media statements on the subject, which were distributed by the pro-government press and the state media. In addition, the office spread the accusations on its own social media platforms, in the form of short films, as a campaign, reaching hundreds of thousands of people with paid advertisements.
The report by the Sovereignty Protection Office, the subsequent media appearances and social media campaign negatively affected the public perception of Átlátszó, many people believed the unfounded accusations. In support of this, I attach:
The media monitoring report of IMEDIA Kft. , which shows that in 2024, Átlátszó was mentioned most often in other press products in connection with the proceedings of the Sovereignty Protection Office, and 220 of these mentions were negative towards Átlátszó, i.e. they echoed the office’s accusations. A social media content analysis conducted by Bakamo Ltd. reveals that, as a result of the communication of the Sovereignty Protection Office, voices critical of Átlátszó have become strongly radicalized over the past year.
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This is how Zsolt Bede, a far-right activist, who became radicalized against Átlátszó, chased the author through the courtroom corridor before the trial
In its report and the media campaign based on it, the Sovereignty Protection Office raised suspicions of numerous serious crimes in connection with Átlátszó, such as espionage, disinformation, or financial abuse, but to my knowledge, no other authority has conducted an investigation against us for such crimes, nor has any been initiated following the report, and no convictions have been made whatsoever.
However, the ruling party has since introduced a bill to parliament that would allow the government to blacklist and economically cripple media outlets and civil society organizations based solely on the opinion of the Sovereignty Protection Office. Ironically, this is called a transparency law, but in reality it is a Russian-style foreign agent law that would impose sanctions on those condemned by the Sovereignty Protection Office.
I believe that it is unacceptable for a state agency to baselessly formulate, according to their own statement, as an opinion, and to spread such serious accusations in a campaign style, to which the ruling party legislators intend to attach serious sanctions. That is why we have initiated this lawsuit so that they cannot do this to us or others, and so that we can clarify ourselves before the public.
Written and translated by Tamás Bodoky, the Hungarian version of this story is here.