Free Media Awards 2024
Szabolcs Panyi – Hungary

Szabolcs Panyi is a journalist at Direkt36, a newsroom based in Budapest that investigates sensitive stories that the authorities would prefer to bury. He is also editor for Central European investigations carried out by VSquare.org, a cross-border investigative platform based in Warsaw which brings together independent journalists from Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Panyi covers corruption, national security, foreign policy, and Russian and Chinese influence in Central and Eastern Europe. At VSquare.org this year, he has drawn attention to Russian and Hungarian meddling in Slovak politics, a story published prior to the Slovak presidential election. Last year, VSquare.org conducted a collaborative investigation entitled ‘Espiomats’ about Russian diplomats and diplomatic services involved in espionage in Europe. In 2022, Szabolcs Panyi was responsible for a report in Direkt36 on Russian intelligence services infiltrating the IT networks of the Hungarian foreign ministry, after the government had tried to keep the ongoing Russian hacker attacks in secret. The scandal returned to centre stage once again a few months ago when additional new evidence confirmed Panyi’s reports. The Hungarian government accused Szabolcs Panyi of lying, but he is used to attacks on his character by government-controlled media. In 2021, Szabolcs Panyi reported on abusive cybersurveillance with the Pegasus spyware in a series of articles for Direkt36 as a member of the international ‘Pegasus Project’ investigative team, a consortium of 17 media outlets. He himself has been a target of the Hungarian government’s surveillance campaign against journalists.