Orbán’s Shepherd

Zoltán Kovács Maintains a Sense of War and Tweets with the Frequency of a Submachine Gun

26 December 2019

State Secretary for International Communication Zoltán Kovács has a notorious reputation for settling accounts with the world’s major media. His aim, however, is not to win argumentative battles but to expand the Hungarian agenda abroad. The Czech Republic is one of the obvious targets.

Zoltán Kovács is well known by foreign journalists. He is the one who maintains the link between the outside world and the political machinery of the Hungarian prime minister. This is also reflected in his – unusual – function: government spokesman for international communication.

The deployment and rhetoric Kovács uses against the critics of Hungary in many ways are a reminder of the Czech spokesman of the Castle, Jiří Ovčáček.

Jiří Ovčáček

Both Zoltán Kovács and Jiří Ovčáček have Twitter as their main communication platform. However, their “firepower” is significantly different – Ovčáček has 54,000 followers on Twitter, Kovács just over ten thousand. However, this does not prevent him from being a global celebrity.

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Vojtěch Berger

Editor of HlídacíPes.org, and previously Czech Radio's foreign editor and a foreign correspondent in Slovakia and Austria. In 2016 he was awarded Czech-German Journalist's Prize 2016 in the multimedia category.

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