{"id":8299,"date":"2026-03-25T09:01:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T09:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/8299\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T09:01:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T09:01:06","slug":"call-between-politico-journalist-and-eu-official-was-intercepted-and-published-online-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/8299\/","title":{"rendered":"Call between POLITICO journalist and EU official was intercepted and published online \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWe will not be intimidated by an apparent attempt to interfere with independent reporting \u2014 nor deterred from the important work we do,\u201d they wrote. \u201cWe have always been and will remain vigilant in protecting our sources, supporting the work of our journalists, and maintaining the accuracy of our independent, nonpartisan reporting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The issue comes at a time when leaks of confidential EU information are in the spotlight ahead of the Hungarian general election on April 12. In\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/2026\/03\/21\/hungary-election-interference-russia-orban\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">a report on Saturday<\/a>,\u00a0the Washington Post said that Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government maintained close contacts with Moscow throughout the war in Ukraine, and Hungarian Foreign Minister P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 used breaks during meetings with other member countries to update his Russian counterpart.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for the EU institution where the official works declined to comment on \u201ctapes produced by unknown and anonymous actors.\u201d POLITICO is not identifying the EU official because the call wasn\u2019t on the record.<\/p>\n<p>POLITICO has not been able to determine how the recording may have been obtained and who was responsible for posting it to YouTube.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Chilling message\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Several Slovak and Hungarian news websites wrote articles about the recording and published partial transcripts. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cHacking and the disclosure of journalists\u2019 materials strike at the heart of press freedom and the protections we must be able to rely on as reporters,\u201d said President of the International Press Association in Brussels Dafydd ab Iago. \u201cThis is illegal under Belgian law, and it sends a chilling message not only to journalists in Brussels but also to our sources here \u2026 The harder question is how to pursue those state actors, whether operating from within the EU or from a third country like Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe will not be intimidated by an apparent attempt to interfere with independent reporting \u2014 nor deterred from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18,466,834,496,406,172,326,82,351,428,2637,2638,945,390,235,473,5743,88,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-8299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brussels","8":"tag-brussels","9":"tag-data","10":"tag-drones","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-espionage","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-hungary","15":"tag-intelligence","16":"tag-media","17":"tag-missions","18":"tag-oil","19":"tag-pipelines","20":"tag-playbook","21":"tag-russia","22":"tag-security","23":"tag-services","24":"tag-spying","25":"tag-ukraine","26":"tag-viktor-orban"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116289004037367887","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}