Another week, another leader of an influential organization caught on tape explaining the meddling of the international, anti-Hungary press corps.
In a blog post built around leaked private conversations of Vincent Peyrègne, the CEO of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), French blog mediapart.fr lifts the veil on the workings of the organization to undermine democratically-elected leaders around the globe, including Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary.
According to the author, WAN-IFRA’s special attention to Hungary should not come as a surprise, as the organization draws significant funding from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF). WAN-IFRA's projects on disinformation in Hungary were supported by the OSF, which made it possible to disseminate framed reports and lobbying material in publications interested in this kind of content.
Don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself.
Asked if it was possible to put pressure on Hungary through the European Union and the European Parliament, Peyrègne admitted to having "done this in the past.” To be more specific, the CEO of WAN-IFRA explained that "we are part of these organizations. There are organizations like the OSF, George Soros's Open Society Foundation, for example, that are quite active in Hungary and there are many others, of course… And that's part of our work as the WAN-IFRA association. We are indeed funded by them. I mean, these are usually global and international agencies or foundations.”
What’s more, we can also learn from the leaked conversations that WAN-IFRA, in fact, can be paid to “conduct research” in Hungary with the aim of influencing media for their customers.
“That’s exactly the strategy, to get more supporters in these countries [for their cause], and to win public opinion. It is an integral part of lobbying. You know, it's not the direct link to politicians that will make the difference. You have to run a campaign […] with a specific target,” Peyrègne said.
And that “specific target” for George Soros and his lobby groups, like WAN-INFRA, has long been Prime Minister Orbán and his government.
For those who have been wondering how it could happen that, increasingly, international media outlets take identical political positions and shamelessly repeat the same narrative over and over again, the French blog, I believe, put it perfectly: Just look at who’s financing them.
In the last few weeks, however, this has not been the first time that leaked conversations of influential members of the anti-Hungary clique revealed their true colors.
In a series of leaked Skype interviews, Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet revealed how foreign journalists paint a distorted picture of Hungary in international media; exposed international NGOs’ far-reaching influence over foreign journalists; and busted the double-standards against Hungary on the international scene.
Meanwhile, a few weeks ago, a former liberal MEP made headlines in Spain for speaking out against the double standards used in the cases of Hungary and Poland.