Click on the banner to read the full series
From the wrecks of the Greek crisis, a group of journalists, most of them fired from the most important media outlets in the country, call for help in English through online radios, documentaries, Twitter accounts and recently launched news websites.
Out of money and depending on volunteers, they use a different model of work to continue functioning. Their financing comes from cafeterias, small restaurants and NGOs.
The Greek alternative press already influences the coverage of international newspapers, such as The Guardian, and inspires special reports about the effects of an unprecedented crisis, such as the article about the cases of police torture against anarchic militants. They try to keep Greece on the international news agenda, and especially, to reverse the image of a country full of lazy people, spread by the conservative European media.
The first big step was taken by Aris Chatzifanou, former reporter of the popular Skai radio station. Fired for not agreeing with cuts on his salary, he helped idealizing the documentary Debtocracy, about the Greek debt. Interviewed by Opera Mundi last April, Chatzistefanou talked about his personal experience of leaving the world of daily journalism and embarking on anti-austerity alternatives.
Following Aris’ steps, the Bubble Radio (www.radiobubble.gr) was created by left-wing militant journalists of all shades, including some journalists fired from Skai radio. It has a long declaration of principles, which refers to the code of ethics of the Greek journalists’ union, and relies on its most important gun, a Twitter hashtag: #rbnews. As it happened on the Arab Spring, the group hopes that change will come from engaged journalism.
“We are not connected to parties, but we have members from several political groups, including Syriza [left opponent of the current Greek government] and anarchists. Our funds come from a cafeteria on Ippokrates street [on the students neighborhood of Exarchia], where me organize events and parties — even though cafeterias are no longer a good source of income during the crisis”, explained Marina, one of the radio’s collaborators.
Radio Bubble has no editor in chief and all of its political positions are discussed on weekly meetings. “We have something that had been erased from a long time on the editorial rooms: soul. We argue, disagree, we reach conclusions and consensus. We find a subject that is “hot” and go for it. We want to see things differently from the others — we are not part of a journalistic industry that went bankrupt because of its silence”, says the radio on its declaration of principles.
The last “hot subject” covered by Bubble Radio were the privatizations of several sectors of the Greek state since the crisis explosion. “We did this work with the support of a Belgian NGO, and we’re preparing an English translation”, told Marina. The coverage was used as a basis for a radio special, which bit by bit, with the help of volunteers, tries to reunite the members of the other European countries that face crisis: Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy.
“What we hear from Spain today is exactly the same thing we heard in Greece a year ago”, says the Greek journalist. “That’s why we want to join forces with them and exchange information, because the worst is yet to come.”
The Bubble Radio has now 15 people working on the “main team” and at least 20 others working on a “second circle” of collaborators. It just aired its first transmissions in English and French, and is waiting for translators to Spanish and Portuguese.
Examples
Marina, the Bubble Radio collaborator, doesn´t say her surname because she’s afraid of future retaliations. She believes that only if more initiatives like the radio appear, Greece can continue to be on the international press agenda — the only power capable of causing any sort of institutional change on the Greek government.
She thinks that there is only one example of good investigative journalism in the country: Kostas Vaxevanis, editor of the Hot Doc magazine, who recently published a list of the Greeks who have foreign bank accounts. The data was in a pen drive, gathered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and sent to the Greek government by IMF’s president, Christine Lagarde. The names had not been exposed until then.
Vaxevanis was arrested after publishing the list, and, after the huge international repercussion, was released. The lawsuit, still pending, shows how difficult it is for Greece nowadays to deal with a free press that’s able to shake the country’s foundations. Alone, the Hot Doc editor won´t change the Greek scenario, but a legion of journalists is heading the same direction.
The blog Keep Talking Greece (www.keeptalkinggreece.com), that appeared after the indignants’ movement in Athens, is one of them, as well the expatriated Greeks that maintain blogs from a distance, such as Greek Crisis Now (greekcrisisnow.blogspot.be), written in French and based in Belgium, that talks about the country using an anthropological point of view.
On the other side, the crisis
Meanwhile, on Akidimias avenue, the main office of the Union of the Athens Daily Newspapers is full of palpable tension. Opera Mundi was there in November, and saw the pressure involved in the decision to go on a new period of strike caused by cuts on health care plans. At the time, there was an obvious division among the journalists, some of them worried about the crisis coverage, and other feeling the need to go on strike and incorporate the anti-austerity protests.
What is also pretty clear is the population’s critical opinion regarding the traditional Greek press. The country is being on freefall for the last 4 years, and that collapsed the trust in journalism as a vector of change, reflected on Greeks’ sometimes surly treatment towards reporters and camera men.
During the protests that Opera Mundi attended, there was no sign of crews covering the event, apart from the ones installed on the balconies of Hotel Grande Bretagne, in front of Syntagma Square and the Parliament.
The “Journalist’s Newspaper ”
In the political spectrum of the Greek daily newspapers, all but one is conservative: the Η ΕΦΗΜΕΡΙΔΑ ΤΩΝ ΣΥΝΤΑΚΤΩΝ, or the “Journalists Newspaper”, that was recently created, after the extinction an old center-left newspaper, the Eleftherotypia. “It’s a different model, works as a cooperative”, explains Marina.
Its editorial room is formed, mostly, by former employees of the Eleftherotypia, and the “Journalist’s Newspaper” aims at being an alternative voice to the Greek crisis. “Our work arise in a moment when a great part of the society believes that you can´t trust the press because it’s lined up with the interests of its owners and the authorities”, say the Journalist’s Newspaper, in an editorial on October 20. “It is our answer to the crisis”.
Open to plural voices, the newspaper tries to expose the humanitarian side of the crisis. “The Journalist’s Newspaper wants to help discuss the crisis and confront ideas, with no dogmatism or obsessions. It wants to bring out the humanity surrounding us and the solidarity that humanizes us”, the editorial concludes.
NULL
NULL