Boris Kálnoky: Parsing Fact From Sensation in the European Mediascape

A decades-old distinguished byline across German-speaking media, Boris Kálnoky’s expert, first-person POV reporting on Hungarian life is suddenly no longer read as being "neutral" west of Austria. Only cheap hit pieces portraying Central Europe as a retrograde backwater can please the sensibilities of his erstwhile loyal readers. How did this happen? In this interview with Jorge González-Gallarza, the freshly appointed head of Mathias Corvinus Collegium's (Budapest) Media School reflects on why reciprocal perceptions of Central and Western Europe have veered from the fact-based towards the sensational, and how he endeavours to flip the script with the future journalists he mentors at MCC. He also plugs Anheland (2011), his family memoir loosely translated as Ancestral Land: The Search for the Soul of My Family, a riveting account of the Kálnokys' cross-border lore with a hidden call to rediscover our lost sense of place.