We are earning our living on the market, there is no foreign influence

The Hungarian government has recently launched a shocking, vile, and cynical attack against independent NGOs and the media.

The Fidesz-proposed bill, although nominally about transparency in public life, is in reality aimed at disabling organizations independent of the government with unprecedented rigour. The bill is contrary to several EU and Hungarian laws, but it also violates the Hungarian Fundamental Law. According to the bill, based on a recommendation from the Sovereignty Protection Office, anyone can be placed on a list at any time and for any reason, essentially making it impossible for them to continue their activities. The Sovereignty Protection Office can add anyone to the blacklist without justification or evidence (transparency, hello?!) and, in an unprecedented move, there will be no possibility of legal remedies.

In the wake of the tabling of the draft law, government politicians have been trying to justify their actions, but it all became utter chaos: the law has not even come into force yet, but the faction leader of Fidesz has already named those it will apply to. He said it will apply to us at Telex as well. There was also talk about there being no retroactive effect, as that is completely contrary to the rule of law, but then it turned out that part of the law would be applied retroactively nevertheless. The most frequently heard argument in statements from government circles is the requirement of transparency, which is a rather cynical expectation from a government that's been doing everything it can to ensure a lack of transparency about their own wasting of public funds.

Telex has operated transparently since its founding, and we have been publishing annual transparency reports which are much more detailed than required by law.

In these reports, we have given an account of our revenues ourselves. This has always included revenues from abroad.

We are earning our living on the market; there is no foreign influence

What's most important: Telex poses no threat to Hungarian sovereignty. We operate legally and transparently, our publication lives off the market, and will continue to do so in the future. More than 90 percent of our income comes from advertising, other commercial revenues (e.g., our webshop), and our readers’ support. Anyone who suggests otherwise is lying.

Last year, 61.7 percent of our revenue came from commercial activities, mainly advertising, but this also includes the turnover of our webshop, ticket sales for our events, and book sales. Approximately 30 percent of our revenue came from our readers' support. Ninety-nine percent of this was contributions of less than 15,000 forints (37 euros).

The remaining less than 10 percent of our revenue came from public, legal, legitimate grants. These did not come from countries such as North Korea or Iran, but from countries or organizations that have a relationship with Hungary, most of them within the EU.

Telex's basic operations have never been affected by foreign sources, which means that our activities are stable even without any foreign assistance, thanks in large part to the support of our readers and advertising. However, we do have some projects for which we have received subsidies. None of these included any interference in or expectations regarding the content we publish. Our grant agreements clearly state that no one has any say when it comes to our editorial content. We alone make all decisions about our work and about what we publish. No one from outside the company has any say in this. At our previous workplace, the entire editorial team quit for this very reason, because people close to the government were planning to influence our independence.

And as for how these grants work...

Every time we apply for a grant, it's because we have an idea that we would like to see realized, and we then look for a grant or subsidy that will help us do that. It's not a case of someone in the US deciding, “Let's give Telex some money so they can bring down Viktor Orbán.” The projects, which are always developed while ensuring that our autonomy is fully guaranteed, are our own ideas; no one can tell us what to write in exchange for funding.

One of our sources of pride, which was made possible by foreign funding, is Telex Academy. We ourselves were the ones who reported on its launch, operation, results, and funding background, which is how the government's propaganda machine found out about it and started attacking it. In this program – which was already part of our plans at our previous place of work and for which we had submitted applications to a number of places – high school students and teachers received basic, apolitical (!) media literacy training and had the opportunity to see and experience firsthand how an editorial office operates. It had nothing to do with training journalists (or, as some government politicians labeled it, "training political janissaries").

It's worth taking a look at the background to this: there is no media literacy education in Hungarian schools today, even though this is something which is becoming increasingly important, So essentially, we took it upon ourselves to provide a public service that would otherwise be the responsibility of the state. Those who want to teach about this or prepare their students or children for the modern-day challenges in the field of information have few options available in Hungary. And from now on, there will be even fewer.

But there is another example that gives a sense of the threat we pose to Hungarian sovereignty. Our pop culture publication, Telex After, was able to get off the ground thanks to funding from abroad, and from the outset, our goal was to make it a viable product that could survive on the market even after the funding ran out – which is exactly what happened.

So now, thanks to Fidesz, it is programs and plans like these that will be left without support and funding. This will obviously affect publishers to varying degrees; in some cases, it will not have a major impact, but in others, it will be a real blow.

What's more, such programs and tenders were already running during previous elections, and looking at the umpteenth two-thirds majority of Fidesz, it is clear how well suited they were or would have been for influencing domestic politics or bringing down the government.

More specifically: not at all.

What has happened so far and what will happen now?

Due to the expected impact of the proposed law, we now have to abandon most of our already submitted tender applications and must rethink our operations and part of our revenue. The reason for this is not because we have anything to hide, but because the severity of this absurd law is looming over our heads, and we want to continue to do our work.

1%

For the first time this year, taxpayers were able to donate 1 percent of their taxes to Telex's Foundation. In theory, we would only find out in the fall how many people decided to do so (our sincere thanks to those who did!), but according to a recently proposed amendment to the ‘transparency law’, if the Sovereignty Protection Office decides to put us on the blacklist, we will not receive any of these funds.

Constant transparency from the very beginning

As we have regularly done so in the past, we are once again providing our readers and supporters with a report on Telex's results, developments, and finances. Since a significant portion of Telex's funding comes from our readers, we believe it is important to report regularly and transparently on how much money we have and how we are spending it. If you would like to support us and are able to do so, you can do so here with just a few clicks. Thank you very much!

As we wrote in our first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh transparency reports, it is not at all common in Hungary for a media company (or any company) to report in more detail than required by law on how much money it has, where that money comes from, and what it spends it on. The media has become particularly opaque in Hungary in recent years. However, since our story is not typical, and the money we use to keep Telex running comes largely from our supporters, we believe it is only natural to disclose the details of our finances.

This is because this is not only our story, but also the story of those who are supporting our work. We will, of course, continue to report on these developments throughout the year in press releases, newsletters, and Telexhíradó (Telex News).

Let us now take a look at what we have been up to and the results we have achieved over the past year!

We turned four

We celebrated our fourth birthday last fall, with a day-long party at Dürer Kert, with many of our readers joining us. Thanks so much! This year, for our fifth birthday, we are planning something similar.

Plenty to read

We published some new books. Our literary anthology got a new look, and Zsebtárcák 1, as well as our third Észkombájn book were also published. Telex's series on scientific, historical, and pop culture curiosities was launched four years ago along with the magazine (the very first article was, of course, about what a telex machine is). Since then, every day, usually at five in the morning, we publish a new, intriguing story. The best articles of the column, supplemented with extra content, were first released in book form last year and the year before.

Plenty to watch and listen to

Telex Diszpó, Telex's regular newsletter, is now live, bringing our readers a roundup of interesting, unique, and once-in-a-lifetime cinema events in Budapest and across the country over the fourteen days ahead. These can be film clubs, film festivals, retrospectives, or anything else that is not so easy to find in regular cinema listings.

On Telex's YouTube channel, we provide ongoing coverage of current affairs with numerous reports and interviews with politicians – at least when our cameras aren't being checked for serial numbers – and we've also produced portraits, studio broadcasts and live broadcasts.

Our series of in-depth interviews entitled Most jövök (Here I come!) with public figures from all spheres of life is now on its 37th episode, and in May, for the first time, we recorded an episode in front of a live audience.

The 25th episode of our program on domestic politics, entitled 2026, which launched last September, was broadcast this week.

On May 19, we broadcast a 10-hour-long live program, where we interviewed 17 guests and 12 of our Telex colleagues about domestic politics, the economy, their work, and the bill designed to make our operations impossible.

In addition to these programs and reports, we have also produced several major documentary-style pieces over the past year:

• a 100-minute documentary about student protests, featuring four high school students;
• an investigation into the Vietnamese couriers who disappeared while we were filming about them;
• a film about the construction of the campus of Pázmány University, which has trampled over everything in its path;
• and we will soon be publishing a full-length film about the MNB scandal, entitled The Big Play.
• additionally, we were able to publish documentary filmmaker Áron Szentpéteri's film entitled Az élet hozta így (Life As it Comes) to Hungarian audiences.

As I write this article, Tamás Fábián's May 29th interview with Péter Magyar has taken the top spot on YouTube's trending list of most popular videos.

But that's not our only channel: on Telex After, other than covering Hungarian music on a weekly basis, we also write about films, television series, theater, and we even test video games live. One of the highlights of the past few weeks was a one-off interview of the band Akkezdet Phiai with our colleague, Dávid Sajó.

On Telex's podcast channel, we discussed economics and foreign policy in Téma, gastronomy in Ízfokozó, Trump's arrival on the scene in Elektor, and recovering from addiction in Felvonó.

Telex's Podcast channel has 37,000 subscribers, After has 45,000, and the Telex’s YouTube channel boasts 327,000 subscribers. The channel gained 105,000 new subscribers in 2024, and our videos were viewed a total of 65 million times that year. In our most recent month, May 2025, the videos on our channel had a total of 6 million views.

Reliability

I am also proud to say that Hungarians consider Telex to be one of the most reliable news sources in the country. In a survey of the media situation in 47 countries conducted by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, a higher percentage of respondents said they trusted the news provided by Telex than in the previous year's survey, making our newspaper the most trusted news brand in the country after HVG and RTL.

We recently launched Telex Helyben:

We reached another milestone in Telex's development. We recently launched a new series entitled Helyben (Locally), in an effort to showcase Hungary as a whole. We will travel from county to county throughout Hungary to feature local stories, communities and interesting topics through photos, reports and videos. We kicked off our tour of the counties with Győr-Moson-Sopron county with nearly thirty articles.

Continuous news feed

Last year, we followed all major events as they unfolded. We had a special supplement on the US presidential election, the European Football Championship, the Olympics, the European Parliament elections, and the local elections in Hungary, we were also there in Tusványos and reported from Ukraine.

To ensure continuous, high-quality news coverage and operations, new colleagues joined the newsroom, the economy desk, the foreign affairs desk and After, our social media management team was expanded, and we also welcomed a new HR manager.

New office space

After almost three years, this year our editorial office moved to a new location. We moved from Astoria to Perc street in Óbuda because our downtown office had become too small, and since the office space was located in a historic building, development and renovation options were very limited. Our new office is not only more spacious, but it also allows most of our colleagues to do their work in one place, in a much more fitting environment.

Awards

Our colleague, Máté Szilágyi, received the Hégető Honorka Award for his video entitled 'We are so attached to youth that we end up hating ourselves'. The video, released last summer, is about the cult of youth pervading our culture, exploring how modern Western society treats youth as the norm and considers aging worthless and something to be avoided even though we all grow old and die.

Telex photographer Noémi Napsugár Melegh won the top award in the news and events category of the 42nd Hungarian Press Photo Competition.

The professional jury of the Capa Center selected five promising Hungarian photographers who will receive special support through participation in the international FUTURES platform. Our colleague Noémi Napsugár Melegh was selected to participate in 2024, and this year, one of our other photographers Lujza Hevesi-Szabó was awarded the honor.

At the 43rd Hungarian Press Photo Competition, which awards the best Hungarian press photos of 2024, Telex photographers won a total of five awards.

Our highlighted features

We had a lot of articles that required an incredible amount of work. Please allow me to highlight a few of them:

• Our colleague Zsolt Sarkadi spent six months researching the life of the architect who designed the building he lives in.
• We spent the whole year chasing politicians to get answers to questions of public interest: we questioned former President Katalin Novák in London about the clemency case. We had TEK (the Hungarian Special Intervention Unit) called on us, and we were even taken to the police station simply because we wanted to exercise our right enshrined in the Fundamental Law – doing our job as journalists.
• We traveled all the way to Puerto Rico to uncover the very curious and bizarre controversy surrounding the legacy of Victor Vasarely, the world-renowned artist who started out in Hungary.
• We reported on the life of a Hungarian man who could have been in a James Bond movie, delved into the activities of a Chinese church that is very active on Facebook, and showed how fertilizers have affected us in the past and continue to do so today.
• We were the media partners of BIFF – the Budapest International Film Festival, the Kenyérlelke Fesztivál, the Hungarian Press Photo Exhibition, and the Nyitottak vagyunk (We Are Open) campaign.

Below is a list of the tenders we applied for and concluded over the past year:

Until early 2025, our non-profit company Ne Hallgassunk Nonprofit Kft., wholly owned by Telex.hu Zrt., operated on grant funding. It was through this organization that we were able to provide Telex Academy's media literacy training, teacher trainings, and workshops for students over the past few years. In the fall of 2024, we received a two-year grant of $690,000 from the US State Department (DRL) to continue our previous program, but we are no longer able to do sodue to the Trump administration's suspension and subsequent termination of funding for the program in January of this year.

As a result, Ne Hallgassunk Nonprofit Kft. will be dissolved on April 30, 2025.

Our finances

Both our revenues and expenses increased last year. Our after-tax profit was slightly over 18 million forints. In accordance with the decision of our General Assembly, we will not be pay dividends this year either.

Here is our financial statement for 2024: