For years they operated as government mouthpieces, using their sprawling reach into homes across Hungary to bolster Viktor Orbán and vilify those he cast as enemies, from the philanthropist George Soros to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

But on Saturday, as Péter Magyar’s swearing-in officially ends Orbán’s 16 years in power, the country’s once powerful state media are facing the prospect of going dark.

“Everyone is afraid. How far will this purge go? And to what extent?” one state radio employee told the Guardian. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen,” said another.

It’s a hint of the broad transformation expected as Magyar and his Tisza party take power after winning a supermajority in elections last month. When it comes to the country’s media, it’s a particularly tough task – one likely to be watched around the world as other countries grapple with far-right movements intent on emulating Orbán.

Since taking power in 2010, Orbán and his Fidesz party reshaped the country’s media to promote themselves and demonise their opponents, sending press freedom rankings plunging and leaving swathes of the country living in an alternative reality.

“It might be very difficult to imagine from America or western Europe what the propaganda and the state machinery is like here,” Magyar told the Associated Press in July 2024. “This parallel reality is like the Truman Show. People believe that it’s reality.”

I find it rather easy to imagine.