In response, several small independent news organizations – such as Reporters United, Inside Story and Solomon – have sprung up in Greece in recent years, funded by grants, subscriptions, reader contributions and partnerships to ensure more independent reporting.
The threats to Greek press freedom are so great that members of the European Parliament recently convened a round table discussion in Athens to get to the bottom of the allegations of wiretapping, among other things. As Stefanos Loukopoulos of Vouliwatch, a non-profit government surveillance and transparency watchdog, said, the state of traditional media in Greece also threatens the state of democracy in the country.
“What has happened to the Greek mainstream media is that business and government are getting their hands on the press,” he said. The prime minister, he added, placed national broadcaster ERT under his direct control when he took office in 2019.
Mr Oikonomou, the government’s spokesman, counters that criticism, writing in a statement: “Greece has a vibrant, diverse and open media”, adding: “a cursory glance at a newsstand in Greece shows a huge variety of titles, many of whom hold the government and government officials accountable daily and in the strongest possible terms.”
And yet the New Democracy government passed a law last year that makes it even easier to arrest journalists. Ostensibly targeting “fake news,” this law threatens imprisonment for “anyone who disseminates or disseminates false news in public or over the Internet in any way that may cause public concern or fear or may undermine public confidence in the national economy. harm, the defense capability of the country or public health.” According to Human Rights Watch, the sweeping language of this law means that journalists could be jailed for even appearing to criticize the government.
It doesn’t help that Greek journalists also operate in a landscape of massive public mistrust – which also drives down ad revenue and circulation figures, further destabilizing the industry. According to a recent report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, only 27 percent of Greeks said they felt they could trust the news in general.
