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Beatrix Siklósi, chief cultural adviser to the head of Hungary’s public media management body, the MTVA, sparked controversy this week after Hungary’s top economic weekly HVG published a screen shot of Siklósi’s Facebook page, which contained an anti-Roma joke, a post honoring Hungary’s interwar leader responsible for mass deportations of Hungarian Jews, and articles from Hungary’s far-right website kuruc.info. Siklósi was a member of this year’s prize committee responsible for nominating the winner of the Táncsics award.  

Several journalists have returned their Táncsics prizes in protest of the government's decision to give the state's highest journalism award to TV presenter Ferenc Szaniszló, who has made numerous anti-Roma and anti-Semitic remarks during his broadcasts. Szaniszló, a commentator for the government-friendly station Echo TV, has described the Roma as “parasitic ape-like people” and blamed the loss of Hungary's Battle of Mohács in 1526 on Jewish bankers. The government also awarded state prizes to singer János Petrás of the far-right music group Kárpátia, considered the “house band” of Hungary's extreme-right Jobbik party, and to archaeologist Kornél Bakay, who claims that Jews organised the slave trade during the Middle Ages.