Photo-journalists at work. Photo: Panayiotis Tzamaros / FOS PHOTOS

Five (simple) reasons why Greece urgently needs more #PressFreedom

For a democratic society, this is a very alarming sign.

In case many of you haven’t noticed today it’s #WorldPressFreedomDay. Every year, 3 May is a date that celebrates the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.

In fact, Greece is ranked 91st out of 180 countries in the 2017 World Press Freedom Index which is published by press freedom group Reporters Without Borders. It is the second-lowest ranking for a European Union (EU) country after Bulgaria. Greece had dived 51 places between 2009 and 2014, a period when journalists were dragged to court for their work and political of financial pressures on independent journalists grew. In 2015 Greece ranked 91st just below Liberia and Kuwait and in 2016 Greece ranked 89th just below Togo and Mozambique. Two years after we are still lower than Togo a country with a GDP 50 times lower than Greece’s Togo’s GDP in 2015 was about 4.003 billion USD while Greece’s was 195.2 billion USD.

As the Reporters Without Borders put it:

“After having staged a controversial auction to grant national broadcasting licenses — a process that was soon afterwards deemed unconstitutional by the Greek High Court — Alexis Tsipras’ government continues to struggle to end corruption and to provide the adequate framework for the functioning of the country’s media. An attempt to meddle in DOL, one of Greece’s most prominent newspaper groups, by appointing a former SYRIZA MP in charge for its rescue, adds to an already flawed media landscape.”

Our reporter Vas Panagiotopoulos visited Washington during the last elections and talked to the Reporters Without Borders U.S. director Delphine Halgand who told us:”The situation in Greece is pretty concerning and has been for few years.”

A recent Reuters Institute report shows that public trust in news, among the 26 researched countries is lowest in Greece, reinforcing the findings of the latest Eurobarometer survey, that only a quarter of Greece’s population trust national media. Many believe the media is little more than an instrument of political parties and corporations.

“Greeks feel that many journalists and news organisations were closely connected to political and business corruption and thus are viewed as partly responsible for the extent of the financial crisis.”

Image Courtesy: © 2017 Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

According to the report 2016 Eurobarometer Survey on Media Pluralism and Democracy, Greeks have very little to no trust in the national media. The data revealed that only 26 percent of the country’s population finds the national media trustworthy.

87 percent of Greeks believe that their national media are not free from political and commercial pressures, compared to the rest in Europe, which comes to an average of 57 percent of skeptics.

In the same survey Greece is the only country where a majority of respondents say their national media do not provide a diversity of views and opinions (52%), although 41% in France and Spain think the same way.

Images Courtesy of the EU Commission.

Greece is today the EU member state that, according to a 2015 report from media researchers Petros Iosifidis and Dimitris Boucas, “journalism and the media face their most acute crisis”.

Apparently Wikipedia has a very short and sharp explanation of the current state of the Greek media:

“The crisis has laid bare the unsustainability of Greek media, and the dependence of media owners on state support in terms of tax breaks and public advertisement revenues, and reciprocating by publishing favourable stories, in a self-censorship mode. When public funds dried up, media went bankrupt, while the government resorted to more open tactics of media manipulation via coercion, censorship, and shutdowns. Lack of job security for journalists have driven them to self-censorship too, limiting themselves to stories understood to be acceptable to owners and politicians.”

This is why in early September, the Syriza-led government held a politically controversial TV licence auction, aiming to cut the number of national TV channels from eight to four. The auction, which raised €246 million, awarded licences to stations Skai and Antenna; also to Alter Ego TV, a new channel owned by shipping magnate and Olympiacos FC owner Evangelos Marinakis. The fourth licence was awarded to construction mogul Yiannis Kalogritsas — who later decided to pull out of the process altogether.

But whether Greek TV licencing series it’s a parody, comedy, or drama, it has triggered a major debate over corruption and control of the media.

In this video Nick Barnets explained the developments related to the licencing of broadcasters in Greece, a field in which recent regulation has imposed reduced access for private broadcasters. As the Greek TV licencing series is turning more and more controversial, private broadcaster have referred to the Greek constitutional court. After all those months we still haven’t heard anything about the Governments intentions.

So here are the five reasons I’ve promised you:

1. Because we need to tackle fake news.

Fake news is a symptom of citizen’s serious lack of trust in the media. There is a decline in independent, accurate and professional journalism as traditional media lose funding and leverage, and social media increasingly become the main distributors of news. Currently in Western countries where journalists do not get killed or detained fake news tends to be the #1 enemy of Press Freedom. Fake news and low quality content skyrocket numbers in the ad-driven Greek media ecosystem so outlets with higher viewing figures dominate air time and digital space. And there’s no way to control it unless government takes action. Here’s just an outrageous example.

I wish we had more resources so we could translate these myth-debunking and fact checking Greek websites so you can realise that ancient Greeks were probably the inventors of fake news. The websites are: http://ellinikahoaxes.gr/ and http://www.factchecker.gr/

2. So your boss can’t call you any time. Even when you are on-air.

“You’ve made me feel so ashamed. We take care of you, we pay you a salary and you talk nonsense. The Greeks are outnumbered, the migrants and the Muslims will populate this country and we will lose our religion.”

This is what Greek media Baron Dimitris Kontominas told live to the presenters of a morning show for expressing their opinions.

Greek media baron calls in live on air to berate presenters for their opinions

3. Because Greek law doesn’t really protect journalists.

“There is no worse thing for a journalist than to sit in a courtroom and hear that he has been sentenced to prison for doing his job,” Greek journalist Stratis Balaskas recounts.

In December 2015, Greek lawmakers approved wide-reaching reforms to the country’s Press Law, popularly known as the “press killer”, that aimed to better protect press freedom and combat the ease with which Greek journalists could be taken to court for defamation.

Few would deny that the reforms were a much-needed step toward combating and reducing the potential chilling effect that disproportionate levels of compensation can produce. However, a little more than one year later, it remains unclear whether the changes have actually improved the situation in practice.

Despite the shared belief that the new provisions are heading in the right direction, the media experts with whom IPI spoke also agree that a great deal of work remains to be done in order to protect press freedom and journalists’ rights in Greece.

George Pleios, professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Athens and a member of the supervisory board of the Leipzig, Germany-based European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), emphasised that press freedom was an ideal, similar to the concept of objectivity in journalism.

“It simply does not exist,” he said. “We can only talk about lesser or greater degrees of press freedom. Unfortunately, for the time being, Greece ranks very low among EU countries.”

In Depth: Greek libel reforms only first step toward greater press freedom

4. So media moguls and banks can never be buddies again.

Greek mainstream media are bankrupt because Greek banks are bankrupt. The whole amount of bank loans to media organisations totals around 1,27 billion euros. This might be one of the reasons why this scandal is being reported quietly in the Greek media landscape. This Watch what this professor told Luna Svarrer.

And here’s more information about the collaborative triangle of “interconnection” between political parties, banks and the media. You will do the math.

Fantastic loans and where to find them

5. The crisis. Yes, the crisis.

As cliche as it sounds in Greece political and corporate interests pervade our national media landscape and at the same time, the notorious financial crisis, now in its seventh year, has shuttered news outlets across Greece, depressed working conditions and severely undermined the quality of reporting.

The IFJ and EFJ have expressed their concern at the devastating situation concerning media freedom in Greece. “We are extremely worried that media pluralism, which is a pillar for any democratic society, is being swiftly dismantled in Greece,” said IFJ President Philippe Leruth.

EFJ President Mogens Blicher Bjerregård also commented “The EU Media Pluralism Monitor has shown that media pluralism in Greece is mostly threatened by the high concentration of media power” and called on “he public authorities in Greece must do the utmost to avoid the closure of ‘To Vima’ and ‘Ta Nea’”.

Greece: stop threats against media pluralism!

And here are some useful links:

a) Follow Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project that verifies threats, violations and limitations faced by the media throughout the European Union and neighbouring countries.

b) A survey based on a sample of 940 journalists reporting from the 47 Council of Europe member states and Belarus, shows that journalists in Europe are often exposed to serious unwarranted interference — including violence, fear and self-censorship.

If you liked this post, please click ❤ on the below to recommend it to your friends, and follow us to catch the next one. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

If you have any corrections, ideas, or even profanities to share, feel free to email us info@athenslive.gr