Phd THESIS Politics, Media and Journalism in Greece
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DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATIONS Supervisor: Professor John Horgan PhD THESIS Politics, Media and Journalism in Greece By Antonis Skamnakis I hereby certify that this material, which I haw submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of PkD is entirely my own work and haw not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work Signed: 4 IDNO-c Acknowledgements The author would like to thank his daughter Xrena, his son Kyriakos and his wife Joanna for their support. He would like also to thank his colleagues and his supervisor Professor John Horgan. Politics, Media and Journalism in Greece By Antonis Skamnakis Abstract The aim of this thesis is to analyze the relationship between politics and media in Greece. The relations of the two fields are defined mainly by the underdevelopment of Greek capitalism. This fact had a decisive contribution in the delay of democratization of the political institutions but also in the delay of development of a massive press. During its emergence, the Greek press was an instrument for the propagatory of national ideas and supporting the movement for national liberation. Later it played an important role in the creation of a constitutional state. The press during that phase was not simply political, but a political institution of power. Even during the period of political divisions of the Greek political system, press functioned inside these divisions, not only by supporting but also by expressing either conservative or liberal political forces. The appearance of radio and later of television was connected with state interference and state control. Both these media, until recently, comprised an integral ideological mechanism of the state and the political powers. The de-regulation of the broadcasting field and the upgraded role of media, and especially of television, did not decrease the degree of composition of these relationships. The entry and the domination of businessmen with main interests in other economic fields expanded the relationship between political power and media on economic level. From the estabIishment of the Modern Greek State untiI today, politics and media not only continue to have a close relationship but one depends on the other. The media supported politically and ideologEcalIy the politicaI power and in turn the political power supported and provided the media with vast subsidies and public contracts. This thesis supports that in Greece historically, there was developed a reIationship of interdependence between the political power and the media, which reflected difient characteristics at different historical periods. Even nowadays this interdependence continues to exist, taking the .Form of Media ClienteIism. CONTENTS Introduction ......... ............................................................................... p.2-6 Methodology. ....................................................................p. 6-10 Literatu~Review ...............................................................p. 10-30 Chapter 1: The histoy of the Greek Psess and Politics............... ..... ...p. 3 1-74 Chapter 2: PoIitics and Media (1940-1961)................................. .. ...‘ p .75- 140 Political Context ...................................................p . 75-107 Media Development............................................... p 107-140 Chapter 3: Dictatorship and Media (1967- 1974)..................... ......... 141- 177 Polrtlcal. Context .....................................................p. 14 J -154 Media during Dictatorship .........................................p. 154-177 Chapter 4: Politics and Media (1 974-1990).......... ................................... p .178-233 Political Context ....................................................p. 178-203 Media Development ................................................p. 203-233 Chapter 5: Politics and Media (1990-2005) ........................................... p 234-267 PoliticaI Context ....................................................p. 234-254 Media Development ...............................................p. 255-267 Conclusions.............................. .... ..................p 268-28 1 Appendixes................................................................................................. 282-326 Bibliography ................................. ..... .................................................. p 327-36 I INTRODUCTION The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze the relationship between the media and politics in Greece. The strong tendencies of commercialization in the field of the media, which developed in the 1990s, combined with earlier the significant changes in politics, led to a re-examination and re-definition of the relationship between the two fields. It is well known that the development of a media system is influenced by population and cultural traits, physical and geographical characteristics, and political, social and economic conditions (Lowenstein and Merril: 1990, Hiebert, Ungurait and Bohn: 1982). However, the press and broadcasting systems have a close relationship to the politico-economic system in which they exist. Governments regulate broadcasting systems and the press in ways that reflect attitudes towards economic organization, the rights of individuals, political traditions, and so on (Papathanassopoulos: 2004) and governments may treat the different media in significantly different ways (Seymour-Ure: 1987). However, this relationship is rather interactive than has one-directional: the media is not only influenced by politics and political institutions, but also the latter are influenced by the media. Greece is an interesting case for studying these relationships. The country's dominant characteristic is the delay in the development of capitalism that influenced not only the two fields whose relationship I will try to analyze, but also the whole spectrum of economic, social and cultural life. This fact attributed certain basic characteristics to the Greek society: a late development of industry, weak political institutions, continuous state interference and, mainly, an atrophied civil society and a dominant system of clientelistic relations (Charalambis: 1989). This is certainly related to the particularities of the modern Greek history. After the national revolution of 1821 and the foundation of the modern Greek state, the country experienced a storm of important political events: foreign intervention, military coups, wars, revolutions, civil wars and dictatorships. Greek society was continuously on the move and experiencing change, and that had a definitive influence on the constant transformation of the political institutions. The political history, and its particularities, are therefore significant for the study of a media system, since as Hallin and Papathanasopoulos have pointed out: 'The transformation of many political institutions-including the mass media- are often slow and uneven and for that reason a knowledge of political history is crucial to understanding current institutions' (Hallin and Papathanasopoulos: 2002: 182). This is because the approach of this dissertation focuses the political history of this country, since it aims to describe and analyse the development of the complicated relationship between politics and media. Through the historical exploration of these two fields, it will be managed to define their exact relationship and, mainly, the degree of influence that one has on the other. In other countries, like the Great Britain and USA, there has been also a kind of relationship between politics and the media. This relationship, however, differs from historical period to period and from country to country. In the USA, in the beginning of the nineteen century, the content of the newspapers 'was dominated by politics and advocacy, reflecting their close ties to political parties and interest groups' (Baldasty: 1992: 3). A similar situation existed in Great Britain as well, from the middle of the 19'~century (Curran-Seaton: 1991: 45). But in these countries, the relationship between politics and media has changed towards the end of the nineteen century. Newspapers attained autonomy from the political parties and the political power, whereas the entry of businesspeople reinforced the tendency for their transformation to a clearly commercial product. -3- Did the same thing happen in Greece too? Or did the relationships between politics and the media follow a different path because of the delay in the development of industry, the general political instability and the political crisis? Based on that assumption, I will try to answer the follow questions: a) Did a relationship develop between politics and the media in Greece during the 2oth century? b) what was its exact form during each historical period? And, d) does it continue to exist nowadays? Nevertheless, this thesis can not be limited only to the exploration of the relationship between the two fields. Parallel to that, it will try to analyze and explore whether these relationships affect the media's structure, the development of the journalistic profession and the education of the professionals. This thesis maintains that the relationship between politics and media in Greece was and continues to be a relationship of interdependence. Of course, from period to period this interdependence had a different form, under the existence of different historical conditions. With the