Giving Compass' Take:

• Journalist Dan Nolan recounts his experience working to expose fake news coming from state-funded media outlets in Hungary. 

• What does suppression of free press mean for a country? How else can the free press be suppressed more subtly? 

• Learn how fake news quickly spreads online. 

I am sitting on the front row at a press conference in the Hungarian Parliament. The weekly Kormanyinfo (government information) presser takes place in Parliament's exquisite delegation hall. It is broadcast live on state television.

In my hand are two leaked documents written by employees of the ministry run by one of the two men standing in front of me.

This is the culmination of half a year's work, meeting whistle-blowers from inside Hungary's taxpayer-funded state media outlets.

One of them had reached out for a meeting last summer, and within weeks a dozen or so were waiting to expose what they called the "fake news factory" of Viktor Orban and his Fidesz Party.

Some of them were disillusioned 20-somethings, recruited during the realignment of government-friendly media after Orban fell out with his former ally Lajos Simicska.

Other, older whistle-blowers, had worked at openly Fidesz-friendly media since before 2010 but now feel that things are spinning out of control.

As I take the microphone, Kovacs moves to block me immediately, in English. "There is an order in the room, and the order is that you give back the microphone …"

I start to ask the question in Hungarian: "We have evidence that the government is directing state media outlets …" He doubles down, "Would you like the guards to escort you out of the room?"

Read the full article on Orban's crackdown on Hungary's free press by Dan Nolan at Al Jazeera