Avrianism, or the Greek media oligarchy
In 2014 Greece occupies the 99th place in the annual rankings of Reporters Without Borders, the so called "World Press Freedom Index". A year earlier it was 84th. Now it has remained behind countries like Zambia, Malawi and Kyrgyzstan. This index signifies the perception of freedom among jorunalists in the various countries.
In 2009 Greece showed the steepest decline in that respect of all countries included in the annual freedom of the press rankings of Freedom House. Last year the newspapers in Greece were rated "partially free". This year the country has slipped to 92nd place, the last among all EU members, and even worse than Mozambique, Burkina Faso and Botswana.
At a first sight, this slump looks like a relatively recent phenomenon. Many analysts have explained it with the economic collapse of the country that started in 2009, but in reality this deterioration of media freedom is a result of decades of gradual undermining and replacing the freedom of speech with something else. Free speech is of course a central tenet of democracy. But Greece has been ruled by oligarchs and corrupt politicians, and has been plagued by the dominance of uncritical, servile media for many years, even long before the crisis.
Anyone who has paid any attention to the Greek media lately, would have noticed a common saying being mentioned very often: people often say that in their negotiations with the politicians, the Greek oligarchs usually threaten to "launch a newspaper" if they do not receive a state contract or a certain favour that they are demanding. The infamous Avriani newspaper has become an embodiment of the connection between oligarchs and politicians. It has become prominent since the 70s and reached its peak in the early 80s, when Andreas Papandreu and his socialist movement PASOK won the elections. Avriani supported Papandreu and quickly became the biggest newspaper in the country. Its pages are full of yellow journalism and partisanship. For the Greeks, this new phenomenon is known as "avrianism".
Avrianism never shied away from throwing mud on Papandreu's opponents, in and outside PASOK, including some reputed intellectuals whose views differed from Papandreu's doctrine. The newspaper became PASOK's party mouthpiece. Its founder Giorgos Kouris was rewarded by being made one of the most influential media moguls in the country. His brother Michalis Kouris was elected PASOK MP in the late 80s. The newspaper went defunct in 2012, but "avrianism" had already cast deep roots in Greek society.
In the height of its glory in the mid 80s, Avriani used to sell the unprecedented 10 million copies daily. Which is why after the 1896 election, the opposition New Democracy shifted focus on another type of media in their struggle for power. The first private radio stations were launched in the country, like Radio Chalkida, Athina 9.84, FM 100 in Thessaloniki, and Kanali 1 in Pireus. All these cities had just elected new conservative mayors. The private radio stations existed entirely as partisan media. They were designed to counter PASOK's supremacy on the political scene, and that of the TV juggernaut, the state EPT television. This brought two important consequences. First, the state never really created a solid legislative framework for the radio stage. These stations only received temporary licenses, and these became subject of constant struggles and political bickering, which all escalated in 2001.
The second consequence was that PASOK immediately responded to the challenge. In 1987 the oligarchs from Papandreu's circle launched their own TV channels. Athens soon found itself furnished with a number of fully fledged TV studios like MEGA and some others. Greece never adopted anything resembling comprehensive regulation on that business, which allowed them to compete by purely market principles for their respective frequencies. Even today they continue operating by temporary licenses. The parliament approves these licenses once in a few years. Meanwhile, a conglomerate of the six biggest TVs controls about 90% of the entire television market in the country.
The lack of a legislative basis is a serious factor for poisoning the media hygiene in Greece. In 2001 the media scene in Athens was literally clogged with dozens of radio stations, perched on the Lycabettus Hill. Then the regime decided to shut down 66 radio stations overnight, and on March 27 that year, the police raided the hill and seized their radio transmitters, most of them being defended by the journalists like in some kind of Battle of Thermopylae. Only 20 stations remained, of course most of them exclusively owned by oligarchs. In result, the variety of formats was crippled, the political points of view were unified, and those journalists who were too critical of the regime were forced to leave. Meanwhile in 2007, Greece de facto legalised the status quo, where a single owner could practically own several media. But even to this day there is no real legislative framework for the NGO media or those with minute financial capabilities, as is the case in most of Europe and North America.
The more the oligarchs were tightening their grip on the media, the more the inherently rebellious Greek people sought for alternative sources of information. Although today Greece is second-last in the EU in terms of Internet exposure, 36% of the Greeks still lacking access to the global network, as early as the middle of the previous decade a huge number of information websites and blogs popped up. The tendency is that more and more Greeks are fleeing away from the mainstream media, but the oligarchs are trying to counter that by looking for ways to block the "wrong" information.
On July 19, 2010, several masked killers murdered journalist Sokratis Giolias in front of his home. Officially, he had been the chief editor of the news segment at the Athens radio Thema 98.9 (now Alpha 98.9), and in the meantime he was the maintainer of the Troktiko blog (the name means "the Mole"), which he used to expose the wrongdoings of the political elites. Before his activity was abruptly interrupted with 16 bullets, his blog was the fourth most active website in Greece. The worst thing in his case is that the assassins found him without any difficulty, although publicly the identity of the Mole was supposed to be unknown. Because the blogs are not obliged to be registered on the name of an individual or a company.
Because of Troktiko and some other similar blogs, the government (then lead by the New Democracy party, which proved no different from its socialist predecessors) proposed in 2008 a new bill which could have completely decapitated all alternative media. The then minister of the interior, Michalis Chrysochoidis insisted that all blogs should be registered and licensed. Unlike the blogs, the TV and radio stations both at that time and today are not subject to such licensing. His demand was then reiterated by PASOK in 2010. And now we are seeing this idea being implemented in reality in Russia by Vladimir Putin, and also being planned in Hungary by Viktor Orban.
Censorship in the Greek media tended to increase as the country was further sliding down the economic slope. In October 2012 Greece was at the brink of being kicked out of the Eurozone, and suffering uncontrolled bankruptcy. The country had record unemployment and a huge financial hole was gaping in its budget. At that time, the investigatve journalist Kostas Vaxevanis published the so called "Lagarde List", containing the names of 2,000 Greeks who had Swiss bank accounts. Those had been given to the then French minister of finance Christine Lagarde two years prior by her Greek counterpart.
That list was supposed to establish if those people were doing tax fraud. Among the names there were relatives of the then prime minister Giorgos Papandreu, his finance minister and other top politicians. The list remained concealed for two years and most names were never investigated, despite the country's almost desperate economic predicament. When Vaxevanis published the full list in 2012, he was instantly arrested on charges of violating the right of depositors' confidence. He was among Greece's most prominent investigative journalists, and his arrest and the ensuing trial and re-trial were meant as a direct hit on all his followers.
As usual, the hit by the oligarchs never remains without a double-down for too long. The same month, journalist Spyros Karatzaferis was also arrested. He was just preparing to air a TV investigation including some Wikileaks information, which showed that Greece's economic data had been forged in order to put the country under IMF supervision. Then in 2013 more journalists were arrested, like Georgious Papachristou and Despina Kondaraki, because some prominent figures from the political establishment had filed complaints for libel against them.
In the world of Greek media the general rule is that the strong of the day are holding the gavel, they can arrest, prosecute, threaten with violence, or even kill those who are standing in their way or trying to expose them. Which is why no one was particularly surprised when this last February, the politician Theodoros Katsanevas sued for 200,000 euros plus a year in jail against a Greek editor at Wikipedia. Katsanevas is the founder of the Drachmi Democratic Movement, and son-in-law of Andreas Papandreu, Wikipedia itself says. The wiki article also said that in his oral will, the late PASOK founder Andreas Papandreu had called Katsanevas "shame for the family and the party". But what really shocked the public was how Katsanevas had found the identity of the Wiki editor. It should have been confidential, just like the Mole case with Giolias.
Once they had removed all the inconvenient trouble-makers, the Greek politicians and oligarchs only had to add one last stroke to the grotesque media painting they were finishing. At the end of 2012, they demanded from the state ERT television to cancel its Euronews broadcast. ERT was in fact among the original founders of the pan-European news channel. The problem was, in December the same year it had started broadcasting Euronews in Greek. Officially, the government claimed that the contract between ERT and Euronews was "illegal". Without being concerned with the fact that by the same standard, technically there isn't a single media in Greece that is "legal". What exactly the regime interpreted as "particularly illegal" in this case, remains ambiguous to this very day. Off the record though, it is widely known that the political elite was worried that a new television could appear that would not be under Athens' control.
The battle between ERT and the rulers was short and doomed, albeit quite epic. On June 11, 2013, the speaker of the government Simos Kedikoglou announced that the national television was ceasing its broadcasts. Effective immediately. The stated reasons: the low ratings of the television, the excessive expenses, and the lack of interest from the advertisers. Of course he omitted to mention that the mission of the national television is not to attract the maximum number of viewers and sponsors, but to reflect on socially significant processes and phenomena, and to become a tribune for the politically disenfranchised groups, and be a correcting factor for the executive power. At least those are the functions of a public national television in the normal countries (example: BBC). Not in Greece, though.
Some of the fired ERT staff kept broadcasting for months on other, alternative frequencies, and appearing on other televisions, which had the generosity to grant them some of their time for free. Some occupied the ERT buildings in Athens and Thessaloniki, and even defended the transmitters with their bodies. Some are still working for a dime or two, for the sake of free speech and the right of the audience to know the truth and speak their mind freely. But this battle, of course, is ultimately doomed, too. At least as long as the Greek people keep turning the other way.
In 2009 Greece showed the steepest decline in that respect of all countries included in the annual freedom of the press rankings of Freedom House. Last year the newspapers in Greece were rated "partially free". This year the country has slipped to 92nd place, the last among all EU members, and even worse than Mozambique, Burkina Faso and Botswana.
At a first sight, this slump looks like a relatively recent phenomenon. Many analysts have explained it with the economic collapse of the country that started in 2009, but in reality this deterioration of media freedom is a result of decades of gradual undermining and replacing the freedom of speech with something else. Free speech is of course a central tenet of democracy. But Greece has been ruled by oligarchs and corrupt politicians, and has been plagued by the dominance of uncritical, servile media for many years, even long before the crisis.
Anyone who has paid any attention to the Greek media lately, would have noticed a common saying being mentioned very often: people often say that in their negotiations with the politicians, the Greek oligarchs usually threaten to "launch a newspaper" if they do not receive a state contract or a certain favour that they are demanding. The infamous Avriani newspaper has become an embodiment of the connection between oligarchs and politicians. It has become prominent since the 70s and reached its peak in the early 80s, when Andreas Papandreu and his socialist movement PASOK won the elections. Avriani supported Papandreu and quickly became the biggest newspaper in the country. Its pages are full of yellow journalism and partisanship. For the Greeks, this new phenomenon is known as "avrianism".
Avrianism never shied away from throwing mud on Papandreu's opponents, in and outside PASOK, including some reputed intellectuals whose views differed from Papandreu's doctrine. The newspaper became PASOK's party mouthpiece. Its founder Giorgos Kouris was rewarded by being made one of the most influential media moguls in the country. His brother Michalis Kouris was elected PASOK MP in the late 80s. The newspaper went defunct in 2012, but "avrianism" had already cast deep roots in Greek society.
In the height of its glory in the mid 80s, Avriani used to sell the unprecedented 10 million copies daily. Which is why after the 1896 election, the opposition New Democracy shifted focus on another type of media in their struggle for power. The first private radio stations were launched in the country, like Radio Chalkida, Athina 9.84, FM 100 in Thessaloniki, and Kanali 1 in Pireus. All these cities had just elected new conservative mayors. The private radio stations existed entirely as partisan media. They were designed to counter PASOK's supremacy on the political scene, and that of the TV juggernaut, the state EPT television. This brought two important consequences. First, the state never really created a solid legislative framework for the radio stage. These stations only received temporary licenses, and these became subject of constant struggles and political bickering, which all escalated in 2001.
The second consequence was that PASOK immediately responded to the challenge. In 1987 the oligarchs from Papandreu's circle launched their own TV channels. Athens soon found itself furnished with a number of fully fledged TV studios like MEGA and some others. Greece never adopted anything resembling comprehensive regulation on that business, which allowed them to compete by purely market principles for their respective frequencies. Even today they continue operating by temporary licenses. The parliament approves these licenses once in a few years. Meanwhile, a conglomerate of the six biggest TVs controls about 90% of the entire television market in the country.
The lack of a legislative basis is a serious factor for poisoning the media hygiene in Greece. In 2001 the media scene in Athens was literally clogged with dozens of radio stations, perched on the Lycabettus Hill. Then the regime decided to shut down 66 radio stations overnight, and on March 27 that year, the police raided the hill and seized their radio transmitters, most of them being defended by the journalists like in some kind of Battle of Thermopylae. Only 20 stations remained, of course most of them exclusively owned by oligarchs. In result, the variety of formats was crippled, the political points of view were unified, and those journalists who were too critical of the regime were forced to leave. Meanwhile in 2007, Greece de facto legalised the status quo, where a single owner could practically own several media. But even to this day there is no real legislative framework for the NGO media or those with minute financial capabilities, as is the case in most of Europe and North America.
The more the oligarchs were tightening their grip on the media, the more the inherently rebellious Greek people sought for alternative sources of information. Although today Greece is second-last in the EU in terms of Internet exposure, 36% of the Greeks still lacking access to the global network, as early as the middle of the previous decade a huge number of information websites and blogs popped up. The tendency is that more and more Greeks are fleeing away from the mainstream media, but the oligarchs are trying to counter that by looking for ways to block the "wrong" information.
On July 19, 2010, several masked killers murdered journalist Sokratis Giolias in front of his home. Officially, he had been the chief editor of the news segment at the Athens radio Thema 98.9 (now Alpha 98.9), and in the meantime he was the maintainer of the Troktiko blog (the name means "the Mole"), which he used to expose the wrongdoings of the political elites. Before his activity was abruptly interrupted with 16 bullets, his blog was the fourth most active website in Greece. The worst thing in his case is that the assassins found him without any difficulty, although publicly the identity of the Mole was supposed to be unknown. Because the blogs are not obliged to be registered on the name of an individual or a company.
Because of Troktiko and some other similar blogs, the government (then lead by the New Democracy party, which proved no different from its socialist predecessors) proposed in 2008 a new bill which could have completely decapitated all alternative media. The then minister of the interior, Michalis Chrysochoidis insisted that all blogs should be registered and licensed. Unlike the blogs, the TV and radio stations both at that time and today are not subject to such licensing. His demand was then reiterated by PASOK in 2010. And now we are seeing this idea being implemented in reality in Russia by Vladimir Putin, and also being planned in Hungary by Viktor Orban.
Censorship in the Greek media tended to increase as the country was further sliding down the economic slope. In October 2012 Greece was at the brink of being kicked out of the Eurozone, and suffering uncontrolled bankruptcy. The country had record unemployment and a huge financial hole was gaping in its budget. At that time, the investigatve journalist Kostas Vaxevanis published the so called "Lagarde List", containing the names of 2,000 Greeks who had Swiss bank accounts. Those had been given to the then French minister of finance Christine Lagarde two years prior by her Greek counterpart.
That list was supposed to establish if those people were doing tax fraud. Among the names there were relatives of the then prime minister Giorgos Papandreu, his finance minister and other top politicians. The list remained concealed for two years and most names were never investigated, despite the country's almost desperate economic predicament. When Vaxevanis published the full list in 2012, he was instantly arrested on charges of violating the right of depositors' confidence. He was among Greece's most prominent investigative journalists, and his arrest and the ensuing trial and re-trial were meant as a direct hit on all his followers.
As usual, the hit by the oligarchs never remains without a double-down for too long. The same month, journalist Spyros Karatzaferis was also arrested. He was just preparing to air a TV investigation including some Wikileaks information, which showed that Greece's economic data had been forged in order to put the country under IMF supervision. Then in 2013 more journalists were arrested, like Georgious Papachristou and Despina Kondaraki, because some prominent figures from the political establishment had filed complaints for libel against them.
In the world of Greek media the general rule is that the strong of the day are holding the gavel, they can arrest, prosecute, threaten with violence, or even kill those who are standing in their way or trying to expose them. Which is why no one was particularly surprised when this last February, the politician Theodoros Katsanevas sued for 200,000 euros plus a year in jail against a Greek editor at Wikipedia. Katsanevas is the founder of the Drachmi Democratic Movement, and son-in-law of Andreas Papandreu, Wikipedia itself says. The wiki article also said that in his oral will, the late PASOK founder Andreas Papandreu had called Katsanevas "shame for the family and the party". But what really shocked the public was how Katsanevas had found the identity of the Wiki editor. It should have been confidential, just like the Mole case with Giolias.
Once they had removed all the inconvenient trouble-makers, the Greek politicians and oligarchs only had to add one last stroke to the grotesque media painting they were finishing. At the end of 2012, they demanded from the state ERT television to cancel its Euronews broadcast. ERT was in fact among the original founders of the pan-European news channel. The problem was, in December the same year it had started broadcasting Euronews in Greek. Officially, the government claimed that the contract between ERT and Euronews was "illegal". Without being concerned with the fact that by the same standard, technically there isn't a single media in Greece that is "legal". What exactly the regime interpreted as "particularly illegal" in this case, remains ambiguous to this very day. Off the record though, it is widely known that the political elite was worried that a new television could appear that would not be under Athens' control.
The battle between ERT and the rulers was short and doomed, albeit quite epic. On June 11, 2013, the speaker of the government Simos Kedikoglou announced that the national television was ceasing its broadcasts. Effective immediately. The stated reasons: the low ratings of the television, the excessive expenses, and the lack of interest from the advertisers. Of course he omitted to mention that the mission of the national television is not to attract the maximum number of viewers and sponsors, but to reflect on socially significant processes and phenomena, and to become a tribune for the politically disenfranchised groups, and be a correcting factor for the executive power. At least those are the functions of a public national television in the normal countries (example: BBC). Not in Greece, though.
Some of the fired ERT staff kept broadcasting for months on other, alternative frequencies, and appearing on other televisions, which had the generosity to grant them some of their time for free. Some occupied the ERT buildings in Athens and Thessaloniki, and even defended the transmitters with their bodies. Some are still working for a dime or two, for the sake of free speech and the right of the audience to know the truth and speak their mind freely. But this battle, of course, is ultimately doomed, too. At least as long as the Greek people keep turning the other way.