Direkt36 is a non-profit investigative journalism center in Hungary with the mission to expose wrongdoings and abuse of power through fair but tough reporting, a kind of journalism that is vital for any democracy.
We provide the Hungarian and international audience with in-depth accountability reporting that most of the Hungarian media outlets do not have the resources to pursue. Direkt36 is not part of the competition of news organizations covering daily events, which allows us to focus our resources exclusively on conducting systematic investigations.
We actively participate in the work of a growing international investigative journalism community and we publish all of our stories – which often have international implications – also in English.
Staff
Patrik Galavits – journalist
Patrik graduated in Public and International Administration from the National University of Public Service. He started out as a private sector employee at multinational corporations before he ventured into journalism. He became a reporter and radio show host at Klubrádió, then he produced a podcast and wrote articles at Azonnali.hu. Most recently he worked at Forbes Hungary. In 2019, he won a grant at WDR, a public broadcaster based in Germany. In 2022, he took part in an International Visitor Leadership Program for journalists, organized by the United States Department of State. He has been nominated for the Quality Journalism Award multiple times. His investigative article series involving abuses and sexual harassment at the Hungarian Dance Academy earned him a nomination for the Transparency Soma Award in 2021.
Kamilla Marton – journalist
Kamilla graduated from the Budapest Metropolitan University in Communication and Media Science. She started her career at Direkt36 as a junior journalist. She is mainly interested in the cultural background of underground subcultures and social inequalities. She loves extreme sports.
Gábor Miklósi – journalist, editor
Gábor started writing articles as a hobby in 1999, when he was working on international affairs for the Roma Press Centre. In addition to minority issues, his articles were regularly published in Magyar Narancs from 2002. In 2005-2006 he worked for Manager Magazin, run by Attila Mong and Éva Vajda, and from 2008 he continued his work for Index. After resigning from the editorial staff, he worked for a few months at Partizán in autumn 2020, then as a journalist-editor at 444. He won the Quality Journalism Award six times between 2001 and 2022.
Szabolcs Panyi – journalist
Szabolcs graduated from Eötvös Loránd University where he studied Hungarian language and literature. Between 2013 and 2018, he was an editor and political reporter at Index.hu. At Arizona State University, he studied investigative journalism on a Fulbright Fellowship in 2017-2018. In the fall of 2018, he joined Direkt36, where he mainly works on stories related to national security and foreign policy. Meanwhile, he helped launch VSquare.org, a Warsaw-based cross-border investigative journalism initiative for the Visegrád region, where he is currently leading the Central Eastern European investigations. He received the Quality Journalism Award and the Transparency-Soma Award four times each, and he was also shortlisted for the European Press Prize in 2018 and 2021.
András Pethő – director, founder, editor
András is a co-founder, editor and executive director of Direkt36. Previously, he was a senior editor for leading Hungarian news site Origo before it had been transformed into the government’s propaganda outlet. He also worked for the BBC World Service in London and was a reporter at the investigative unit of The Washington Post. He has contributed to several international reporting projects, including The Panama Papers. He twice won the Soma Prize, the prestigious annual award dedicated to investigative journalism in Hungary. He was a World Press Institute fellow in 2008, a Humphrey fellow at the University of Maryland in 2012/13, and a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2019/20. András has taught journalism courses at Hungarian universities.
András Szabó – journalist
András worked eight years as a journalist at Origo, a then prestigious online news site, but also spent several years at Index and vs.hu news outlets. At Direkt36 he covers Russian-Hungarian relations, activities of business circles close to Fidesz, and political decision making processes of the Orbán government. In 2011 he received the Gőbölyös Soma Award dedicated to investigative journalism in Hungary, and in 2010 he won the Quality Journalism Award, both for a series of articles that focused on a corruption case connected to the former Socialist-led government.
Dániel Szőke – journalist
Graduated from Eötvös Loránd University at 2013 as a librarian scientist. As a freelancer he worked with 444.hu news-site for several years, and in 2020 attended Transparency International’s mentor program for investigative journalists. In January 2021 he started to work as an intern, and since September 2021 he is a full-time journalist of Direkt36.
Zsuzsanna Wirth – journalist, editor
Zsuzsanna started her journalistic carreer at Origo, where she spent ten years at the news desk, covering and investigating various political and social issues as well as corruption and organized crime. She was awarded the Prize for Quality Journalism three times, and is also a special awards winner of the Gőbölyös József Soma Foundation. She worked for the Hungarian editions of Forbes and Marie Claire. She has worked at Direkt36 as a journalist since 2016, and as an editor since 2022. In 2022, she studied OSINT techniques as an OCCRP Research Fellow. She teaches journalism at ELTE’s media department.
Péter Nádori – COO
The first editor-in-chief of Origo, Péter worked with Direkt36 founders András Pethő and Gergő Sáling at the news portal. His other positions and activities included a long stint as deputy CEO of Lapcom (a print/online publishing conglomerate), academic publications, and teaching at several universities. In 2020-21 he assisted the team leaving Index to launch the crowdfunded news portal, Telex. He was one of the founders (and, later, chairperson) of the Association of Hungarian Content Providers.
Borbála Pál – nonprofit manager
Bori studied social sciences at the Eötvös Loránd University and the Central European University in Budapest. Afterwards, she worked for Centropa, an international educational NGO aiming to preserve Jewish memory. She enjoys working and volunteering for civil organizations, and is passionate about non-formal education and social inclusion.
Advisory Board
Direkt36 is supported by two advisory bodies.
The members of our journalistic advisory group are Márton Galambos, Sándor Orbán and Balázs Weyer.
Our Strategic Review Board, which supports our business planning, is composed of Noémi Alexa, Viktor Bálint, and Sebastian Esser.
