State Secretary addresses latest ‘fake news’ attack on Hungary

Referring to the charge that Hungary had been the most corrupt country in the European Union for years, Zoltán Kovács said: “Not a word of this is true: we’re talking about a politically motivated … index.”

At a discussion of “fake news” in connection with Hungary, Zoltán Kovács, the state secretary for international communications and relations, said that whereas “the liberal narrative is falling into its own trap, we must point out these traps”.

Noting the publication today of the corruption perception index by Transparency International (TI), Kovács told a Nézőpont Institute event in Budapest on Tuesday that the index was “methodologically unfounded”, so the analysis itself was also “absurd and unacceptable”.

Referring to the charge that Hungary had been the most corrupt country in the European Union for years, he said: “Not a word of this is true: we’re talking about a politically motivated … index.”

Kovács said TI’s report was “methodologically flawed and subjective, and does not take the EU’s own official reports into consideration.”

The state secretary said reports in the international press “attacking Hungary” were based on a “fake narrative” in which individual reports were part of a bigger narrative spanning a decade in which “the liberal elite has been trying to discredit anyone who opposes the great liberal ideology”.