A new state-subsidized news agency has entered the international media market under the name of V4NA (Visegrád 4 News Agency) to spread the “joint worldview” (if such a thing exists) of the Visegrád Four countries: Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Its central message, though, is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s anti-Western and anti-immigration propaganda.
The new agency was registered in London, somewhat unusually, by Balázs Medveczky, Hungary’s ambassador to the UK. At the helm of a 50-strong staff is Árpád Habony, the Hungarian prime minister’s friend and chief propaganda advisor. He inherited some of the resources for such an endeavor from the late Arthur Finkelstein, the global master of political hate campaigns, who had helped bring such hardliners to power as Presidents Nixon and Reagan, prime ministers Netanyahu and Orbán, Kosovo’s Hashim Thaçi, and others.
V4NA claims to have reporters in Berlin, Brussels, Bratislava, Budapest, Warsaw, and Paris. Its news will be available in French as well, but right now, it only publishes in Hungarian and English. It is somewhat fortunate that their propaganda news is currently only available for fee, so it will not have a major influence among the wider public.
Our cover picture depicts The Guardian’s headline about V4NA. Photo: Darko Vojinovic, AP
