The View From Our Own Correspondents: Hungary

During the Cold War,there was no shortage of foreign powers beaming their message to Hungary.

Radio Free Europe, financed by the CIA, broadcast almost round the clock, had the most powerful transmitters, and possibly the most brazen Cold War rhetoric; Germany was dull; China barely comprehensible. But the news from London sounded plausible. In a world infused with lies, that meant something. The BBC's Hungarian service did not cause the peaceful revolution of the late 80s, but it did help to drive the Communist state's media into humiliating retreat.