Journalists Fight Pandemic Censorship in Hungary

Dozens of Hungarian news outlets have demanded access to health workers in an open letter today protesting their government’s suppression of COVID-19 reporting, Reuters reports.

• “Doctors and nurses are not free to talk to the public, while journalists are not allowed in hospitals, so we cannot assess what happens there,” wrote the authors. 

The government denies barring journalists from reporting on the pandemic—but only state media are allowed into hospitals and vaccination centers. 

• “The government has operated censorship in the most important public matter for a year. It’s a scandal,” says Tamas Onody-Gomperz, of the leftist magazine jelen.hu.

Hungary’s status as Europe’s most-vaccinated country hasn’t been enough to dampen a surge that has slammed the country with record-breaking cases and deaths, the AP reported on Monday. 

It now has one of the world’s highest pandemic mortality rates per capita.