On 29 September, HVG journalist Noémi Martini posted on her Instagram about a shocking mishap involving the Budapest Police Headquarters (BRFK) and the National Police Headquarters (ORFK). After asking for an interview with the Head of the Budapest Police, she was accidentally left cc’d on an internal police email in which they wrote: “Egy sikítozó kékharisnyával nem fog Budapest rendőrfőkapitánya interjút készíteni”, or, roughly, “Budapest’s chief of police is not going to do an interview with a shrieking bluestocking.”
The context: Martini had posted on her socials about her own experience of street harassment on her route home, after which hundreds of women flooded her account with their own similar and – often scary – experiences. “That’s when I realised that this was a systemic issue,” she recounted, adding that she felt she owed it to all the people who had confided their stories to her to initiate a formal conversation at an institutional level.
@rtl.news Interjút adott az RTL Híradónak Martini Noémi, a HVG újságírója, akinek véletlenül elküldtek egy belső rendőrségi levelet, amiben sikítozó kékharisnyának nevezték őt.
♬ eredeti hang – RTL News
She created an anonymous questionnaire and collected more than 300 stories, 93% of them from women, about sexual harassment taking place on the streets of Budapest and other cities, as well as on public transport. Several respondents were under 18. After this, she got in touch with the police again and was told over the phone to send concrete questions by email. It was during this exchange that she accidentally received the internal response referring to her as a “shrieking bluestocking” – essentially reducing a journalist raising serious concerns about women’s safety to an annoying feminist “crying” about women’s issues.
When she received the email, Martini said she had to read it a few times in disbelief. She was about to welcome a victim of sexual violence into the studio, as she was preparing for a video interview about sexual harassment.
On her Facebook page, the journalist wondered if this was the intentional act of a whistleblower. “I don’t know whether this internal correspondence reached me by accident, or whether someone wanted it to become public how the police communicate internally about women,” she wrote.
The police have since apologised to Martini, those affected, and the public, calling the tone of the email unacceptable, and have announced an internal investigation. The Interior Ministry also contacted Martini. She has been offered the opportunity to ask her questions in person, although not specifically to the Chief of Police.
The story raises a much bigger question: what is it like to be a young female journalist in Hungary today? And, more broadly, what happens when political regimes change but structural attitudes and institutional cultures take much longer to shift?
Hungary did, in fact, undergo a major political change this year: after 16 years in power, Viktor Orbán lost office in the April 2026 parliamentary election, and Péter Magyar’s TISZA party formed a new government in May. But changing the people at the top does not automatically dismantle deeper structural problems; whether that means sexual harassment, the way institutions respond to it, or the attitudes of decision-makers and state officials towards the very serious crimes and issues half of the country’s population faces day after day.
Martini’s post has been met with public outcry and disbelief, with thousands of reactions and comments, many of which recount further stories of harassment.
And in the context of the Cornell Chi Phi rape case, I cannot help but feel as helpless as ever. When is this going to end? When are women going to be taken seriously – in Hungary, in the US, and all over the world?
Written by Zsofi Borsi.
Illustration by Nóri Csendes.
