There is something encouraging about a government discovering that public television should not lie. There is something less encouraging about needing to announce this as a major change in programming.

The Associated Press reports that Hungary’s public broadcasters displayed an apology after Péter Magyar took office in May and temporarily suspended their news programs. Leadership has since been replaced and broadcasts resumed. After years of service as Viktor Orbán’s mouthpiece, the institution had apparently located an alternative editorial policy: news.

The improvement matters. Investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi, who had left for Poland after facing an espionage complaint under Orbán, is back in Budapest. Police dropped that complaint two weeks after the April election. The left-leaning newspaper Népszabadság has returned in print ten years after its closure. People who were pressured into silence are speaking again. That is a democratic gain, not merely a change in the people looking pleased on television.

What interests me is how much of the old system’s apparent strength depended on public money. AP cites a watchdog study finding that up to 90% of state advertising revenue went to pro-Fidesz media. Those flows have dried up, and scores of affiliated outlets and influencers have cut back or closed.

Apparently some of the spontaneous national enthusiasm required a remarkably dependable advertiser.

This is the useful distinction between an audience choosing a political viewpoint and a government financing the impression that the viewpoint is everywhere. Readers can buy partisan journalism. Taxpayers should not be involuntarily subscribed to the prime minister’s self-esteem.

The new media authority has changed its appointment structure to include governing and opposition nominations, with its president selected through an open application process and elected by lawmakers. That is more promising than replacing one party’s exclusive control with another party’s exclusive control and calling the new stationery pluralism.

But Magyar’s government does not earn an exemption from scrutiny by being better than Orbán’s. AP also reports criticism from independent outlet Telex over withheld cabinet agendas and summaries. Magyar has faced criticism for targeting independent outlets on social media when he dislikes their coverage.

There it is: the awkward second half of liberating the press. Once free, it might investigate you. This is not a malfunction. No technician needs to be called.

Public-service journalism needs accountability, and speech protections cannot depend on political loyalty. Those principles do not change because the official now receiving uncomfortable questions helped dismantle the previous system.

Keep state advertising transparent. Release information. Let independent reporting irritate the people whose salaries the public pays. A government genuinely interested in a free press should expect to encounter stories it would never commission.

The old arrangement already offered politicians excellent coverage at public expense.

Hungary does not need that service restored under new management.