
Default Watching
(8th July 2015)
If Greece leaves the Euro but no media report it, did it really happen?
So much media coverage. Too much media coverage.
We get it, Greece is the word. It has its own hashtags too: #Grexit #Greferendum #AGreekment (seriously?). Sharemarkets fluctuate on a whimper of a decision, newspapers change slogans daily, Eurogroup meetings never end — the Guardian recently ended one live-blog by beginning another. It’s an omnipresent phenomenon, and its coverage has been omnipresent too.
It’s important if the Eurozone stays together in its current geopolitical and economic structure, and at the same time it’s important if Greece leaves; after all, there is no legal framework for leaving. But it’s almost as important how the story is told.
In recent years, various political movements around the world (Tahrir Square in Egypt, Occupy New York, Hong Kong Umbrella movement) have seen a shift from the mobilisation of people to the mobilisation of space, where space includes social agents taking multiple forms, including but not limited to: actions in urban space, social and traditional media, and political representations.
Influenced by social media, the increased speed of media coverage has enabled these movements — including the Greek crisis — to possess an unparalleled transmission of information and events.
However, there is a difference between broadcasting political claims and making them.
Journalism can’t report everything; that is impossible. However, more critical choices have to be made regarding coverage so that it adopts concrete positions. It is all too confusing. We are all too confused by the multitudes of information that has already changed before it has set.
Take a step back and please wait for more to happen so that you — and all of us — can process it better from a larger optical context.
The omnipresent drip-feed journalism has no winners, and by having no winners, journalism wins by default.