In recent weeks, the Hungarian government led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban has frequently attacked Western media outlets but none more than CNN for its reports on the sorry state of Hungarian democracy. Hungarians can still watch CNN, but since January, the network is no longer part of the package offered by Hungary's largest cable provider.

Klubradio, the country's popular independent talk channel, has been even less fortunate. Despite widespread protests by its listeners, an effort supported by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the European Union, the government's one-party Media Council has not renewed the station's broadcasting license. Absent a last-minute reversal, Klubradio will be unplugged this spring.

With the fall of Hungary's Western-style, pluralistic democracy, the time is right for the United States to reinstate Radio Free Europe's Hungarian-language broadcasts. Hungarian would then join 28 other languages in which Radio Free Europe transmits its programs on radio stations in countries of the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, South Asia and the Balkans. The president of one of these countries told one of us last year that he begins every morning by listening to RFE's summary of the news.