Edit“The files came from the Karmelita”: insider offers glimpse of Orbán’s smear machine
One assignment was to stake out the Luxembourg home of former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who had publicly called Viktor Orbán a dictator
Ágnes Forgács, a former journalist at the pro-government tabloid Ripost, contacted investigative outlet Átlátszó after its reporting on the secret surveillance of the opposition Tisza Party. She wanted to describe from the inside how Hungary’s government-aligned propaganda apparatus operated for years – an apparatus she herself was part of.
Forgács began her career as a traditional journalist in 2001 at Népszava, then moved into tabloid media. She worked at Sláger Rádió, Napi Ász, Star, Story and Best magazines. These were run by editor-in-chief Miklós Ómolnár, who later played a central role in launching Ripost and shaping political tabloid journalism in Hungary.
She describes the Story and Best era as “friendly tabloid” work: following celebrities, taking paparazzi photos, and digging into private lives – but without the aim of destroying people. That methodology was later transferred to politics: long-term secret surveillance, photography, hunting for compromising situations, mocking labels, and weaponising everything for the ruling Fidesz party.
From tabloid to political hit jobs
The path to Ripost began after 2014. Ómolnár was dismissed from Story and Best, and several loyal staff left with him. In late 2014 he approached Forgács about a new paper and reassembling the old team. There were vague mentions of Spanish investors. While Hello Magazine may have had real Spanish backing, Ripost turned out to be government-funded.
In the newsroom, names like Árpád Habony and Péter Schatz came up frequently. At the time of hiring, no one explicitly said they were joining a political propaganda tool.
From the start, Ripost operated differently. Ómolnár told Forgács to stop writing about celebrities and focus on public figures and crime stories. It soon became clear these were not standard journalistic topics but targeted cases, pre-selected individuals, and politically useful narratives.
One early story Forgács later recognised as character assassination involved Marcell Murányi, then editor-in-chief of Népszabadság. She obtained police information about a fatal traffic accident in which Murányi was involved and passed it to Ómolnár, who published (or had published) an article. The information itself was publicly obtainable, but Forgács now considers it a serious ethical breach that Murányi was not contacted beforehand. This practice became routine: subjects were often not approached at all, or only with token questions right before or after publication.
The fundamental difference from real journalism, she says, was that the goal was never to uncover truth, verify facts, or obtain responses from those involved. It was to quickly produce a politically useful narrative. People were treated as if they “wouldn’t tell the truth anyway,” so the key journalistic safeguard of hearing the other side was simply abandoned.
Ordered campaigns: Scientologists, Jobbik, and beyond
Around 2015, Ripost ran a series against the Church of Scientology – another “ordered from above” project. Ómolnár gave Forgács names of former members who had allegedly committed suicide. She worked on it for a long time and only later understood the government’s interest: it did not want the church to establish its Central European headquarters in Hungary.
This was when the internal phrase “they’re asking for it from above” became common. Staff often did not know exactly who issued the orders, but they understood these were not independent editorial decisions.
Forgács resigned in 2016 and worked in a factory, but was later lured back for the print launch of Ripost. She says the situation worsened after that. Around 2017 came what she calls “open-field attacks.”
One example: she was sent to a press conference by Jobbik MP János Volner without knowing what to ask. As it started, a Ripost article about him appeared online, and she was told to question him about it – with TV2 cameras present. The goal was to embarrass the target publicly on camera. This became a strategy: ambush people on the street, at events, or press conferences where they could not easily escape. The aim was not to get answers but to turn the confrontation itself into content.
In 2017–2018, ahead of the parliamentary election, Jobbik was a main target. Forgács and colleagues were sent to a lakeside hotel where the Jobbik parliamentary group was meeting. They were told to produce “insider” photos suggesting they had infiltrated or overheard something. In reality, they photographed from a distance with a 200mm lens and heard nothing, yet articles implied inside knowledge. Similar stake-outs happened at other locations. One piece was so absurd that a satirical site republished it unchanged as parody.
On 15 March 2018 (Hungary’s national holiday), Forgács was sent with photographers to find or even provoke a Jobbik scandal. No usable material emerged, and she was later dismissed for not aligning with the expected political logic.
Looking back, Forgács is self-critical. For a long time she rejected being called a propagandist, seeing herself as an experienced journalist. Today she says those critics were right: she was a journalist until 2015, and a propagandist afterwards. She blames herself for not recognising the system she was in.
V4NA “International News Agency”
After leaving Ripost again, Forgács briefly worked at vasarnap.hu before being approached in late 2018 for a new “international news agency” – V4NA. The team was small. They travelled to Brussels and Strasbourg with European Parliament access, but their job was not to report on plenary sessions or EU decisions. It was to “find something bad.”
One assignment was to stake out the Luxembourg home of former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker – who had publicly called Viktor Orbán a dictator – in Capellen. Forgács and her photographer waited for days outside the house but only managed to speak to Juncker’s wife.
Forgács says the political goal at V4NA was overt: smear operations. No one asked for traditional journalism. The “international” aspect was largely fictional – the London headquarters existed only on paper; real work happened in Budapest.
Mediaworks era and government files
Forgács returned to Ripost for a third time in 2019, now under the government-aligned KESMA/Mediaworks conglomerate. During the 2019 local election campaign and afterwards, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony became a frequent target. They followed and photographed him for a long time but could only prove the banal contradiction that the green politician who advocated cycling used a car. Minor issues were inflated into attacks through headlines and framing. The goal was not a major scandal but continuous wear-down of the target.
In 2021, ahead of the 2022 election, the propaganda machine intensified. One early task was to secretly photograph Imre Mártha (later head of Budapest Transport) at an equestrian polo event – from bushes – while other government-linked figures attended openly.
Forgács repeatedly mentions receiving “files from the Karmelita” – a reference to the Carmelite Monastery in Budapest that houses parts of the Prime Minister’s Office. These included surveillance-style dossiers and secret recordings used for smear stories.
She says the machinery combined classic tabloid methods (stalking, hidden photography, hunting intimate moments) with political objectives. The aim was relentless negative coverage of government opponents to shape public perception.
Forgács decided to speak out because the public needs to know how this system worked and who bears responsibility for the degradation of large parts of Hungary’s right-wing press. She does not claim to know every detail of the funding or command chain, but she is certain that tabloid techniques were systematically placed at the service of Fidesz political interests.
Fidesz-linked Mediaworks funded a Brussels news website with 550 million forints annually
The original article in Hungarian by EUalive’s partner Átlátszó can be found here.
Caption: Ágnes Forgács, a former journalist at the pro-government tabloid Ripost, contacted investigative outlet Átlátszó after its reporting on the secret surveillance of the opposition Tisza Party. She wanted to describe from the inside how Hungary’s government-aligned propaganda apparatus operated for years – an apparatus she herself was part of. [Photo: Átlátszó]
Updated: May 18, 2026 - 06:45
