MTVA (Hungary)
Médiaszolgáltatás-támogató és Vagyonkezelő Alap (MTVA) ("") is a Hungarian fund company owned and financed by the Hungarian state, through the State Office of Media and Communications (NMHH). MTVA was established on 1 January 2011, and from July 2015 the company's main task has been to finance and operate Duna Média, Hungary's public-service broadcasting company. It is an active member of the European Broadcasting Union. History. MTVA brought together four public media companies in Hungary: Magyar Rádió (MR), Magyar Televízió (MT), Duna Televízió (Duna TV) and Magyar Távirati Iroda (MTI). At the same time, MTI was  given the exclusive right to produce news content for the public broadcasters. According to Hungarian politicians, the establishment of MTVA should help clean up the country's "dysfunctional public broadcasting sector". However, the media reform received criticism from foreign politicians and media experts who believed the reform limited the independence of broadcasters and gave the government greater control over the country's public broadcasters. The four broadcasters continued as four divisions under MTVA, but on 1 July 2015 were merged into one joint broadcasting company: Duna Media. This nonprofit organization is the legal successor to each of the four formerly  separate entities managed by the MTVA. The Duna TV channel become the main generalist channel, replacing the first Magyar Televízió channel M1, the oldest in Hungary, which changed its format/genre and assumed continuous broadcast of news related programming. Among other things, MTVA is responsible for distributing funds and resources to the various departments in Duna Media. Most people who work for Duna Media are also employed through MTVA. According to the Hungarian National Assembly, MTVA wants to have a relationship with its British counterpart BBC. Services. Its activities include radio, television, news agencies and online services as listed below : Radio. MR operated 7 radio stations: Controversies. In 2011, MTVA's news editor Dániel Papp manipulated a news segment about politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit to make it look like he fled the scene without an answer after being questioned on accusations of child abuse. Subsequently uncut footage showed that Cohn-Bendit actually replied to the reporter's questions and denied the accusations. Papp was later promoted. In the same year, Zoltán Lomnici, the former president of the Supreme Court was blurred out from a report about a press conference he was co-hosting. The censoring of Lomnici was suggested to  be politically motivated. In 2019 a leaked audio recording made during the run-up to European Parliament elections showed a senior MTVA editor, Balazs Bende informing reporters that the institution does not favor the opposition's list and the reporters should work accordingly. Bende instructed the reporters to produce content using the "appropriate" narrative and methodology, especially on topics like Brussels and migrants.