Statement checking
Many years ago, after a tiring day at a DG Trade meeting in Brussels, I was reading the Financial Times on the plane. Somewhere in the back pages, a few sentences of what was called minus news caught my attention. It gave readers information on exactly the subject that was being discussed at the meeting that day. To my surprise, the FT news did not correspond to reality, in fact it was quite the opposite. When I got home the next day, I contacted our NGO experts and asked them to try to start a rectification procedure on the FT’s news. As we know, press rectification lawsuits allow very tight deadlines, so we had to hurry to get the real facts and find a pro bono law firm that would take on this case. In the end, the fact-checking took more than 2 months and we could not find a law firm to represent us in the press redress case against the Financial Times. Many years have passed since then, but the situation has not changed. Both the world press and especially social media are full of inaccurate, unscientific or deliberately misleading news and information. Western democracies are fundamentally threatened by this process. Fortunately, fact-checking journalists are increasingly investigating the reality of the situation, but these accurate figures are no longer reaching the general public. The situation is even more difficult with complex, cross-jurisdictional allegations that are damaging to the interests of those in power and cannot be dealt with through the normal fact-checking process. Therefore, we decided to examine some of the statements related to the democratic rule of law in the framework of the GTA Integrity Institute Hungary with scientific rigour and to publish the results of our analysis.
Our idea is that both our own experts and, later on, anyone can come to us to verify the veracity of a statement. The designated experts will, taking into account the capacity of the time period, examine the source of the statement, check its accuracy and decide whether to accept the request. Both the statement and the source are then posted on our website, which is indicated by three colours to indicate the current status. On the one hand, we use blue to indicate that the investigation is still in progress, and green and red for the results. The green colour indicates that the statement has been proven to be true, and after careful investigation its correctness can be established. Red indicates an untrue statement. Where appropriate, the methodology, key sources and findings used in the statement checking process will be published in a separate report. These will also be made public.
Samples of ongoing and closed fact-checking communications.
GTA Fact-check
Statement:
Source:
Date:
Status: Investigation in Progress
Allegation: the second report of the TransparencyInternational Hungary Chapter (TIMTE), which contains the”Anti-Corruption Screening of the Hungarian Legal System asa Whole”, was “not accepted” by the General Assembly on therecommendation of Ádám Terták, head of the association and Ernst & Young Ltd.
Source: minutes of the general meeting of 26 August 1999, page 3
Date: 13 August 2025.
Status: investigation in progress
GTA Fact-check
Statement:
Source:
Date:
Status: Investigation Closed – Statement Verified as True
GTA Fact-check
Statement:
Source:
Date:
Status: Investigation Closed – Allegation False or Misleading
Statement: the reasons for the closure of Transparency International Hungary (TIMTE) were lack of funds, lack of social interest and accreditation uncertainty.
Source: Dr. Zolna Berki, the last president of the association and later its liquidator; minutes of the general meeting of 1 March 2005, page 1
Date: 09 August 2025
Status: Investigation Closed – Allegation False or Misleading
- the Soros Foundation has transferred USD 14,000 to the association this year, of which USD 4-4,000 were not used for operations, but were transferred to the Romanian and Bulgarian organisations. So there was still HUF 3.2 million in the account;
- the association was professionally impeccable, published three volumes of studies on corruption, and the claim of social disinterest is false;
- the “uncertainty of accreditation” is not explained, it is referred to on the second page of the minutes: “If the organisation is not accredited, the association may no longer use its name.” In fact, Miklós Marschall, European Director and then Deputy Director General of Transparency International’s International Secreteriat (1999-2017), subsequently devised a system which ultimately led to the dissolution of the Hungarian member organisation, which was operating in the national interest. The court documents include a previous statement by Peter Eigen, the head of TI, that he had authorised the use of the name, so the accreditation uncertainty could have been managed with sufficient autonomy.
Allegation: There is no freedom of the press in Hungary. The government’s real influence and distorting influence on the media market has been gone for years.
Source: Attila Babos, borsod24.hu, Freedom of the press is the common cause of the country https://borsod24.hu/2025/03/15/a-haza-kozos-ugye-a-sajto-szabadsaga/
Date: 13 August 2025.
Status: investigation closed, allegation false or misleading
1: the article itself contains a contradiction, since the author says that “there is still a free press”. “There is no freedom of the press in Hungary, but there is still a free press. There are quite a few who believe that this has served the interests of the authorities. After all, it could be said that everything can be written, no one is restricted, there is an independent and free press (they believe there is still freedom of the press), political and public newspapers, and even investigative portals and investigative, fact-finding (mostly online) newspapers and channels still exist.”
2: according to the United States Human Rights Report 2024, in Hungary: „The constitution and law provided for freedom of expression, including for members of the press and other media, and the government generally respected this right. Independent media were active and expressed a wide variety of views. Government policy and practices, however, influenced public service and some private media outlets as well as the media market, which disadvantaged some kinds of media.”
(Source: US State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, August 12, 2025. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2024, Section 2. Liberty a. Freedom of the Press https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/ )
3: “In recent years, the opposition has made a number of accusations against the public media, claiming that they were not allowed to come into the public media. These accusations are false.
We show the truth. From the elections of 3 April 2022 to 2 April 2023, we sent them a total of 6,764 invitations. But in the vast majority of cases, they were not accepted: 6603 did not show up.
DK received one of the highest numbers of requests. We invited them a total of 888 times, including 444 times to appear on M1’s This Morning programme. The same number of calls to Kossuth Radio’s Good Morning, Hungary! However, they came to M1 only once. We waited for them 887 times in vain.
We called the MSZP even more than that. In total, they received almost 3,000 invitations to appear on TV and radio. But like DK, they did not take advantage of the vast majority of opportunities.
We also called Momentum almost a thousand times. The total number of enquiries sent to them was 920, but they only came 10 times. On 455 occasions, the TV studio and on 455 occasions the radio studio would have received them, but their representatives did not come.
In the vast majority of cases, Jobbik did not take advantage of the opportunity offered by the public media. They received 718 invitations from us. Half from M1, the other half from Kossuth Radio. But we waited for them 702 times in vain.
We also called Dialogue, 666 times in total during this period. Not once did they appear in the studios of either M1 or Kossuth Radio.”
(Source: M1 News 2024.05.10. Papp Dániel MTVA CEO open letter)
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