How Free is the Greek Press?

AIM Athens, May 5, 2000

The way the Greek press chose to celebrate World Press Freedom Day on 3 May con-firmed that its freedom has serious limits. Newspapers ran many related stories based on material distributed by international press freedom organizations; but with only a couple of exceptions, none dealt with what these groups had to say about press free-dom in Greece. Interestingly enough, the main source for their articles was the Inter-national Press Institute (IPI). When, though, a few months ago the same organization published its annual report that included a severe review of the shortcomings of press freedom in Greece, the same newspapers ignored it.

All dailies but Avghi and Eleftherotypia ignored this time a Greek Helsinki Monitor release informing the media that Freedom House had given a rather unfavorable rating to Greece. On a scale 0 [total freedom] - 100 [no freedom at all], Greece scores 30, which is the worst score a free country can get: from 31 start the partly free countries (and from 61 the not free ones). All traditional democracies and almost all new democ-racies of Central Europe and the Baltics score better than Greece. In the OSCE area, only most (but not all) Balkan and former Soviet countries are worse off.

Freedom House bases its report on the restrictive influence over media content of laws, regulations, political pressures and controls, as well as economic interests. It explains its rating for Greece with the following entry: «Though the courts frequently convict journalists of libel for insulting officials, the press is generally free of government con-trol. Many journalists were charged and sentenced this year for defamation. Self-censorship was common, particularly during the NATO air strikes in Yugoslavia. One radio station was raided and closed by the police.» [Freedom House, "Censor Dot Gov: The Internet and Press Freedom 2000. The Annual Survey of Press Freedom"]. Indeed, Greek and international press freedom organizations have repeatedly asked for changes in the legislation so that libel be depenalized and articles that criminalize the (even in extreme forms) expression of opinion (blasphemy, disturbance of international relations, etc.) or investigative reporting (publication of classified documents, etc.) be abolished. In vain, as not even the Greek journalists' union back such demands, and, in the meantime, scores of journalists end up in the courts every year for such "crimes."

But the main problem in Greece is (self-)censorship. What happened with the IPI and the Freedom House reports is common practice. When there is international criticism of the country's human rights record, almost all Greek media have two alternative strategies: to ignore the news because it is embarrassing; or to report it in a way that will challenge its credibility and, often, include outright, sometimes libelous, attacks on the authors of such reports.

It is characteristic that, on the same day, Greek media were full of references to the just released report on terrorism by the US Department of State. The rather clumsy comparison of Greece with Colombia in the latter was used as a basis for the press to discredit it and see behind it some policy choices of the US government, eager to pres-sure Greece to adopt a tougher counter-terrorism policy. Hardly any newspaper evalu-ated the actual information in the report indicating that, in the year of the Ocalan crisis, the Kosovo war and the Clinton visit to Greece, there was indeed a very high number of -usually not too dangerous though- attacks against American interests. Just as there was very vocal and widespread anti-Americanism in public opinion that helped "legiti-mize" such attacks. Moreover, as only the group of investigative journalists of Elefthe-rotypia known as Ios recalled (6 May 2000), most charges about Greece's inability to deal with its terrorist groups for over a quarter century had been voiced in the past by many politicians and analysts in Greece, as well. Finally, another analyst, Antonis Pa-payannidis, said it more directly: "A great percentage of the Greek people has tolerated or at least hesitated to condemn terrorist forms of behavior. (...) While quite a number of media continued to use the term 'executioners' for [the members of 17 November] who have used blunt personal self-legitimized forms of violence" (To Vima, 7 May).

Another example of biased journalism were recent stories on the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), on the 50th anniversary of the respective Convention. Useful description of the Court was certainly given, as well as statistics about the caseload, but the illustrative examples tended to come mostly from Turkey. The reader of the four-page dossier on the ECHR in the glossy magazine Tachydromos, an insert in the highest circulation daily Ta Nea (6 May), for example, would not find there any infor-mation on even one case in which the European Court convicted Greece. A regular reader of Greek newspaper was of course hardly surprised. A month earlier, after all, on 6 April, the Court published its latest conviction on Greece, in the case of the Jeho-vah's Witness Iakovos Thlimmenos. The latter was a certified accountant who was de-nied civil service employment because of his prior conviction for conscientious objec-tion: naturally, the Court found discrimination based on religious affiliation. With the usual few exceptions, Greek newspapers ignored the news. However, all newspapers exhaustively covered Turkey's convictions by the same Court in about the same time.

On 20 April, Greek neo-Nazis "celebrated" in their own way Jewish Passover: they painted anti-Semitic slogans on the Holocaust memorial and the Synagogue in Salo-nica, some in German: Juden Raus! (Jews Out!). A shocked Jewish community issued an emotionally strong statement. With the exception of Avghi, the Greek press kept silent. So did almost all others, with the exception of a couple of very belated state-ments by the Greek foreign ministry and the small leftist Coalition party, themselves sent only to Avghi on 25 April and not even made available in the respective websites.

On 26 April, the state-appointed mufti of Komotini was issuing a statement denounc-ing a state agency's refusal to issue a necessary certificate to some vakif property the Muslims in Thrace had been owning since the 15th century. Here, there was not one newspaper to report the problem. Just as, years ago, there was not even one newspa-per to report that a Cretan court had denied that the Catholic Church, with a half-millenary presence, had a legal personality allowing it to own a church in that island. A few years later Greece was to be convicted by the ECHR on that issue: only then a few newspapers devoted a couple of articles...

So, when it comes to minority issues, the Greek press is reminiscent of that of authoritarian regimes where "nationally sensitive issues" are reported only in a "nation-ally correct" way, if at all. One can list an endless series of such examples. Especially when that minority are the "non-existent" Macedonians. The few times they are men-tioned, they are usually referred to as "autonomists" which in Balkan jargon means separatists, or as Skopjans or Skopjanophiles, which is understood as manipulated by Skopje [the way the Greek press calls the [Republic of Macedonia]. While raising the issue of the existence of that minority, let alone of related human rights violations is considered "provocative" ("provocative allegations on the existence of a 'Macedonian minority'" [state-owned] Macedonian Press Agency, 21 April).

Another issue where the Greek press allows for heavy self-censorship concerns the way it deals with the so-called in Greece "interlocking interests," i.e. the business in-terests of media owners, that extend well beyond the media. Greece is a country where the problem is not how much the state controls the media but how much the media control the state. To quote the late former President of the Republic Constantine Tsat-sos, "I have the honor to be the only contmeporary Greek politician who managed to win a place in the political life of the this country without ever having the blessing of the Lambrakis Group, to which all other have at least lit a candle. These are the condi-tions in which public figures in Greece have to work and that is the kind of press that contributes to their development" (reprinted in Eleftherotypia, 6 May 2000).

The outgoing Minister of Education Gerasimos Arsenis, when he was turning over his ministry to former columnist in one Lambrakis newspaper, Petros Efthimiou, alleged that his "major problem in the preceding three years had not been the pupils, the teach-ers and the corporate interests [that had revolted against his reforms of the educational system] but the hard war of those vested interests that aimed at the control of the new education media, the Internet, the CD/ROMs, the new books, the electronic libraries." (Avghi, 14 April). The Minster could have had a valid point or, else, he expressed in this way his grief that he was being removed. One would never know, though, as al-most all print and electronic media opted not to report the allegation, even after one of them identified that the minister meant the Lambrakis Group, and the latter's morning daily To Vima, on 15 April ran an unusually harsh editorial against Arsenis. Since Lambrakis has -inter alia- partial or full ownership of media that represent the majority of the country's media scene, who would dare treating the matter as a real journalist?

Likewise with another media and telecom mogul, Socrates Kokkalis. For three months, the fortnightly Anti has been publishing what has been appearing as well-documented dossiers showing that Kokkalis had been an East German secret service (Stasi) opera-tive since the 1960s and that he built his companies on such relations; plus that he had bribed the governing socialists in the 1980s to acquire telecom contracts. In another country these allegations, since they were not met by any kind of denial or even legal action by Kokkalis against that publication, would have led to a major scandal. In Greece though, where Kokkalis also has a share in many media and is reportedly allied to Lambrakis, plus he owns Greece's most popular football team, Olympiakos, hardly anyone dares looking into the matter. It is widely believed after all, that when then Prime Minister Constantine Mitsostakis opposed Kokkalis' interests in 1993, he sud-denly saw deputies leaving his party and joining the new upstart Political Spring of na-tionalist Mr. Samaras, amidst many allegations of the role of Kokkalis in those deser-tions. Since then, Kokkalis was able to even break ground at Harvard where his Foun-dation has led to the creation of Balkan programs and chairs. While, in combination with the Lambrakis Foundation, they managed to play a key role in the Royaumont program the EU launched three years ago for the Balkans. After succeeding in getting a Greek atop that program, the two helped most of the Royaumont projects go to Greek (GO)NGOs and the program was as a result of marginal contribution to the re-gion's development.

The Director General of the public radio network ERA (Greek Radio), Yannis Tzan-netakos, summed up as follows the situation: "Very few journalists struggle to observe even their own code of ethics. Most care for their personal prosperity and the easy ac-cumulation of fortunes, achieved through either "bossy" journalism, or renting their para-journalistic services to many prominent employers with suspect interests. All that is common secret that is never revealed nor proved" (Avghi, 7 May).

One could then wonder whether perhaps Freedom House was lenient towards Greece by calling it an -even borderline- "free" rather than a outright "partly free" country when it comes to press freedom...

Panayote Dimitras