Hungarian Investigative Journalist Wins Fourth Award

Last month, Hungarian journalist Szabolcs Panyi won his fourth Transparency-Soma Award for his investigative reporting. But to him, the award is less a showcase of his work and more of a reflection of the scarcity of Hungarian investigative journalists in the field.

“The field is narrowing, and I think that’s also one reason why there are very few outlets that are still independent and at the same time have the resources and have the manpower to allocate people to conduct investigative journalism,” he says.

Panyi, an ExchangeAlumni through two programs - the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP) and Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship in Journalism - was recognized for his work on a number of stories highlighting corruption and foreign influence, including on Chinese influence in Hungary and on the Pegasus spyware used to surveil him and five other Hungarian journalists.

When Panyi noted that he was subject to surveillance by the Hungarian government, he said he remained undeterred – and in fact did not worry about any threats to himself. Instead, he was concerned about his sources.

“The most important for a journalist is credibility, and part of credibility is telling people that they can trust us, that if they help us uncover wrongdoings, we make sure that they don’t get into trouble, that the information that they give us can remain confidential,” he says. “We won’t reveal their identity and also the laws, even in Hungary, they grant us with the right to the protect our sources.”

Panyi’s sense of integrity and inspiration for his work comes both from the “adrenaline” of the work and from his international exchange experiences. While on his first IVLP in 2014, he met an older journalist in Dallas, Texas who had covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The journalist had a visible scar on his throat from covering the activities of the mob, which Panyi says serves as a testament to the importance of the work. Later on, he and the other IVLP participants got to meet the veteran journalist Bob Woodward, who is known from his work on the Watergate Scandal as a reporter for The Washington Post.

But what continues to inspire him most is his time on the Humphrey Fellowship meeting other professional heroes, including Leonard "Len" Downie Jr. , a former executive editor of The Washington Post, and Walter Robinson, an investigative reporter from the Spotlight team at The Boston Globe who broke the story of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

“I remember Walter Robinson’s, or Robbie’s, classes at Arizona State.... There was one class where he introduced a set of ethical rules, and these are very practical rules that every journalist should follow and I remember he had 12 ethical rules for journalists to follow. And these are very down to earth, very practical things, like, ‘Always give a fair shake to the others, if you’re reporting on someone, make sure that his or her voice is also heard in the reporting,’” Panyi said. “I remember this other one, ‘Kill people with kindness.’ So no matter how many times they slam the door on you, no matter how many times people hang up on you, you always have to remain calm. Because your job is not to get into quarrels or debates or express your frustration. Your job is to obtain information so that the public can know what’s happening there.”

Panyi continues his investigative journalism work to this day, notably covering surveillance in Hungary in the lead up to the country’s parliamentary elections. He says that while he learned a lot from American journalists, his experience was made by the cohort of fellow international journalists on his exchange programs, whom he now considers to be not just professional contacts, but also lifelong friends.

 

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Szabolcs Panyi with his Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship in Journalism cohort at the State Department in 2017