Ferenc Szaniszló

On 14 March 2013 the Hungarian Human Resources Minister Zoltán Balog awarded Szaniszló the Táncsics award, Hungary's highest state award for journalism, named after Mihály Táncsics. A dozen former recipients of the Táncsics returned their awards in protest, due to Szaniszló's history of controversy including a 2011 incident which resulted in a government fine over, according to The Independent, "anti-Semitic outbursts and his detrimental remarks about the country’s ostracised Roma minority," including calling Roma "human monkeys" and suggesting he regarded Jews as garbage.

In Hungary, Szaniszló worked as an editor for Duna TV news between 2005-2007. Since 2008 he has worked for the television chain Echo TV, a "favorite forum among Hungarian neofascists" according to Le Monde. Following the Ajka alumina plant accident in October 2010, Szaniszló claimed that the incident was caused by the International Monetary Fund, and bombing by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Ferenc Szaniszló (born 7 October 1960) is a Hungarian right-wing media figure, and a former broadcaster for Echo TV, a conservative television service in Hungary. In 2013 Szaniszló received the Táncsics Journalism Award for his earlier work, including reports on the fall of the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav Wars, but returned it following criticism over anti-Semitic and anti-Roma remarks broadcast nationally on Echo TV.

Szaniszló was born in Csenger in 1960, and grew up in Csegöld and Fehérgyarmat, both in east Hungary. He attended University in Moscow, and was subsequently stationed there as an employee of the Hungarian daily paper Magyar Hírlap.