Top public media adviser stirs controversy over anti-Roma and far-right Facebook posts

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.  

According to HVG, Siklósi was fired from Hungary’s public TV in 2004 after she and a colleague invited Holocaust denier and British historian David Irving onto a program. After leaving public media, Siklósi worked as a broadcaster for the pro-Government station, Echo TV. In 2012, Siklósi was given a new cultural program on public TV and now serves as the top cultural adviser to the head of the MTVA.