The Case of Greece

Case study report Does media policy promote media freedom and independence? The case of Greece Evangelia Psychogiopoulou, Dia Anagnostou, Anna Kandyla Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) December 2011 3 Project profile MEDIADEM is a European research project which seeks to understand and explain the factors that promote or conversely prevent the development of policies supporting free and independent media. The project combines a country-based study in Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey and the UK with a comparative analysis across media sectors and various types of media services. It investigates the configuration of media policies in the aforementioned countries and examines the opportunities and challenges generated by new media services for media freedom and independence. Moreover, external pressures on the design and implementation of state media policies, stemming from the European Union and the Council of Europe, are thoroughly discussed and analysed. Project title: European Media Policies Revisited: Valuing and Reclaiming Free and Independent Media in Contemporary Democratic Systems Project duration: April 2010 - March 2013 EU funding: approx. 2.65 million Euro Grant agreement: FP7-SSH-2009-A no. 244365 Copyright © 2011 All rights reserved Disclaimer The information expressed in this document is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. 2 Information about the authors Dia Anagnostou (PhD Political Science, Cornell University) is a lecturer of politics at the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies at Macedonia University of Thessaloniki, a senior research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy in Athens, and a Marie Curie research fellow at the Law Department of the European University Institute (Florence, 2010-2012). While her original research interests were in the fields of comparative politics of southeast Europe and European integration, they subsequently extended to the study of human rights, minorities and the role of courts from a socio-legal studies perspective. Her articles have appeared in West European Politics, Southeast European Politics, International Journal of Human Rights and European Public Law, among others. Her recent publications also include The European Court of Human Rights and the Rights of Marginalised Individuals and Minorities in National Context (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010, co-editor with E. Psychogiopoulou). Anna Kandyla is a research assistant at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, Athens, Greece. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication and mass media from the University of Athens and a master of arts degree in political behaviour from the University of Essex, UK. She has worked as a research assistant at the Amsterdam School of Communications Research, University of Amsterdam, and as a stagiaire at the Communication Unit of the Directorate General Interpretation of the European Commission. She has also held researcher positions in the field of market research. Evangelia Psychogiopoulou is a lawyer and a research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, Athens, Greece. A graduate from the Faculty of Law of the Kapodistrian University of Athens, she holds a DEA in EU law from Paris I University, a master of research degree in law from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy), and a PhD in law from the same university. Her main areas of research are: EU cultural and media policies and human rights protection. She has held research and management positions at the Academy of European Law (Florence, Italy), the Directorate General Education and Culture of the European Commission and UNESCO. Her articles have appeared in European Foreign Affairs Review, European Law Journal, European Law Review and Legal Issues of Economic Integration. She is also the author of The Integration of Cultural Considerations in EU Law and Policies (2008) and co-editor (with D. Anagnostou) of The European Court of Human Rights and the Rights of Marginalised Individuals and Minorities in National Context (2010). 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive summary........................................................................................................5 1. Introduction................................................................................................................6 2. Actors and values of media policy.............................................................................8 3. The structure of the Greek media market ................................................................15 4. Composition and diversification of media content ..................................................32 5. The journalistic profession.......................................................................................48 6. Media literacy and transparency requirements ........................................................55 7. Conclusion ...............................................................................................................57 8. References................................................................................................................60 9. List of interviews .....................................................................................................65 4 Executive summary The present report examines the processes of Greek media policy-making, the regulations adopted that have a bearing on the development of free and independent media and their implementation. The analysis discloses that, despite the proliferation of policy actors and norms, brought about by the liberalisation of the media sector, technological developments and regulatory pressures stemming beyond the state, Greek media policy-making has remained highly centralised in the hands of the government of the day. This cabinet-centred model of media policy-making has been thoroughly influenced, albeit in opaque and informal ways, by powerful economic and business interests who have sought to gain power, profit, or both, at the expense of the normative functions that the media is expected to perform in the public interest. The limited involvement of independent bodies in policy-making, the absence of journalistic professionalism, and the lack of a strong civil society that is able and willing to defend media freedom and independence have all reinforced such trends. This has resulted in a haphazard style of policy-making that lacks coherence and clear political orientation, and a selective enforcement of the laws enacted to regulate the market structure and the content of the media. The effects of these processes are evidenced in the densely filled and distorted media landscape where most outlets have been for years artificially supported. The economic frailty of the Greek media has rendered them particularly prone to business and political pressures in return for financial backup and support. The limited development of a truly ‘public service’ broadcaster further exacerbates concerns about the degree of media independence in the country. In terms of media content, EU legislation has been a major source of the normative rules adopted by Greek lawmakers in order to define the contours of an audiovisual media that should be accurate, unbiased and pluralistic. However, the vast number of media outlets available and the absence of a regulatory culture on behalf of the responsible authority, the National Council for Radio and Television, have hampered the efficiency of monitoring compliance with the rules in force. Concurrently, self- regulatory instruments, which were set up to govern journalistic behaviour and to promote certain ethics and principles in journalistic practices, have remained dead letter. The journalists’ unions have managed to act as a lever of pressure vis-à-vis the media owners but have been almost entirely absent from the policy-making process, especially as regards issues of media impartiality and independence. Greek courts have exhibited greater willingness to defend journalists’ freedom of expression and the citizens’ right to information but have done so slowly and often inconsistently. At the same time, the state has given limited attention to the promotion of media literacy in general, and the pursuit of specific goals linked to the protection of freedom of expression and freedom of information for media education in particular. Besides these longstanding issues, there is an array of challenges presently faced by the Greek media policy which could have a further pervasive impact on the media’s independence, unless proper action is taken to the opposite direction: pressure to accommodate technological developments and the economic recession plaguing the country. 5 1. Introduction Since the democratic transition of the mid-1970s, the development of the Greek media has been intrinsically linked to the structure of the country’s political economy. Both as a sector of the economy, and as a space of public discourse and dialogue, the media has both reflected and fuelled the specific characteristics of the country’s democracy and its shortcomings, as well as its distinctive, state-dependent market economy. Constitutional provisions have provided guarantees for the freedom of expression and the freedom of information, prescribed the values that the media should serve, and defined the aims of media policy along the

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