Nick Malkoutzis on Media and the Greek Crisis; Greek News Agenda

Interview with Nick Malkoutzis Greek News Agenda

"Greece is a small country that has made a lot of noise in recent years. Separating the signal from the noise has been the big challenge for foreign journalists who had to follow developments. There are a number of reasons that the Greek crisis has been a difficult one to cover: Greece is a complex country with many competing interests, it experienced an economic collapse whose magnitude was unprecedented for a developed country, the management of the crisis involved lots of actors with contrasting motivations and interests (Greece, European institutions, eurozone member states, IMF), and it was a crisis that stoked strong passions and arguments over political ideology, economic thinking and even visions for the European Union. As a result, the quality of the coverage has been mixed. Some of the reporting and analysis on Greece has been excellent but a lot of it has been restricted to very stale narratives that either skimmed the surface of what was happening or fitted a particular pre-determined view. Similarly, the domestic media has also had a mixed time in covering events. While there has been excellent, probing work, there has also been a lot of coverage whose sole purpose was to strengthen the “pro-memorandum” or “anti-memorandum” argument, which has created such a cleavage in Greek society over the last few years".