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The Sovereignty Protection Office has identified Internews as an organization that channeled US public funds to media critical of the Hungarian government, they wrote in a statement.
According to the statement, the investigation proved that “media support programs launched from the United States of America do not merely provide technical assistance, but also impose ideological and political expectations on the supported editorial offices.” They added that Internews works to create narratives that allow US progressive elites to put pressure on governments and decision-makers in those countries.
Internews is a US-based non-profit organization founded in 1982.
Donors include the United States Agency of International Development (USAID), George Soros’s Open Society Funds, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the US-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has been detailed in previous reports by the agency as playing a major role in the illicit foreign funding of opposition coalitions in the 2022 general election in Hungary.
The Protection Office stated that Internews is in fact an organization dependent on the US government and its national security agencies.
The Hand That Feeds – Internews’ Role in Shaping Leftist Media
The Sovereignty Protection Office has identified @Internews as a key conduit for funneling U.S. public funds into Hungarian media. While Internews brands itself as a champion of press freedom, its funding… pic.twitter.com/0jxVAIn0KH
— Zoltan Kovacs (@zoltanspox) March 19, 2025
According to the Sovereignty Protection Office, Internews provides not only money, but also technology and content to disseminate narratives to media outlets, which must represent the network’s values and messages and be active on the issues it has identified. The grants are conditional on the creation of narratives that enable the US progressive elite to pressure governments and decision-makers in those countries and influence their citizens.
It was mentioned that
the organization is very active in the Central and Eastern European region, especially in Hungary and Poland.
“Since 2010, its media development programs with USAID have played a role in the operation of some media outlets in Hungary (such as government critical 444.hu) through tenders, training, and infrastructure support,” the statement said.
The Office’s investigation highlighted that in exchange for the grants, Internews required Hungarian media to make the topics it identified part of the public discourse, to frame narratives that ran counter to the client’s interests as disinformation, and to provide mandatory content to the funded newsrooms.
Hungary Today’s editorial team already drew attention to Internews more than two years ago, pointing out that the launching of the organization was the latest salvo of the Biden administration’s international information-war.
As the previous article recalled then, this was not the first example of the US government attempting to reshape the Hungarian media scene. In 2017, the State Department launched a grant program for “independent Hungarian media in the countryside.” The Hungarian government accused the US State Department of interfering in domestic politics. The program was later de facto canceled, presumably notwithstanding the fact that although the State Department had a history of an uneasy relationship with the Hungarian government under various Democrat administrations, President Donald Trump and his White House during the first term had good relations with Hungary.
Via Sovereignty Protection Office, Magyar Nemzet; Featured photo via Pixabay