In Defense of the Reader

Excerpt from the Foreword by György Baló:

“Forget the daily Magyar Hírlap; this spectacle is much more spacious than that. Indeed, the entirety of Hungarian media may be at stake. What lends special merit to the failure of the Eötvös Károly Institute’s enterprise–a fiasco so precious as to amount to a minor victory–is the fact that it succeeds, wittingly or unwittingly, in charting and exposing much of the incongruity that characterizes not just the Magyar Hírlap, but Hungarian mainstream media across the board. While the work does not manage–perhaps does not even aspire–to resolve these contradictions, it certainly identifies quite a few of them, and offers advice that is not only soft-spoken and diplomatic but, for the most part, easily comprehended and followed as well. This work, and hopefully more of the same, may eventually–many, many years down the line–lead to a journalism in print, television, and radio that is more honest, more genuine, and more sophisticated at the same time. But it is not going to happen overnight.”