Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó had to chide BBC anchor Emily Maitlis for “unbalanced, one-sided” journalism after she threw a hissy fit and launched into a rant about the EU standing for “tolerance, diversity, and human rights.”

Breitbart (h/t Marvin W) Speaking to Szijjártó on the publicly-funded broadcaster’s flagship BBC Newsnightprogramme, Maitlis Speaking to Szijjártó on the publicly-funded broadcaster’s flagship BBC Newsnightprogramme, Maitlis took umbrage with the Hungarian statesman’s claim that “the current migration policy of the European Union can be very easily translated as an invitation” to illegal migrants.

“On World Refugee Day this week, you passed a new law which makes it illegal to help migrants. It criminalizes helping illegal aliens, and that includes asylum seekers. Why would you do that?” she asked.

Szijjártó attempted to correct the presenter, saying that the anti-illegal immigration package — dubbed ‘Stop Soros’ — was aimed only at those organisations which “help people to ask for asylum even if they have no legal basis for that… and promoting [immigration] opportunities with no legal basis”.

Szijjártó explained that illegal Muslim migration into Hungary — which was running at 3,000 a day at the height of the migrant crisis, as Maitlis herself reported at the time — has only been brought under control because of the tough stance adopted by the Hungarian government, and that the country remains on the frontline as the situation in the Balkans looks set to boil over again.

Maitlis obviously loses patience and says: “When you look at Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s words… he’s talked of Christian Hungary and a mixed population with no sense of identity, and he’s called the people coming in potential terrorists, so this isn’t actually about immigration, is it? It’s about xenophobia,” she asserted.

“No, I have to reject that, and I take it as an insult,” Szijjártó answered firmly. “We Hungarians, we do have the right to make our own decision [about] whom we would like to allow to enter the territory of Hungary, and who we do not allow,” he said, fighting through the BBC presenter’s attempts to interrupt him with further questions.

Maitlis responded to the Hungarian foreign minister’s suggestion that the Hungarian voters — who re-elected his government in a super-majority landslide earlier in the year — should be respected, prompting her to quote opposition politicians who claim the country “is no longer a democracy, it is a creeping authoritarianism”.