The Greek debt crisis: Is the media a problem? Hint...yes!

[the_future_modernes]

Greece: Is the media part of the problem?

As Greece battles economic collapse, protests in the country have been getting louder, bigger and more heated. Greeks on the streets have been demonstrating against the squeeze on their wages and pensions, but the media covering those protests have found some hostility directed at them as well.

The protesters accuse the media of stereotyping them, of being voices of the economic and financial elite and not reflecting the reality of the Greek worker. In our News Divide this week, we look at the Greek protests and how the media covered them.See awesome video which won't allow me to embed at the source

DEBTOCRACY: Causes of Greece's debt crisis and solutions, hidden by the government and the dominant media [full length documentary]

For the first time in Greece a documentary produced by the audience. "Debtocracy" seeks the causes of the debt crisis and proposes solutions, hidden by the government and the dominant media.

Editor/Script Katerina Kitidi
Aris Chatzistefanou
Scientific Research Leonidas Vatikiotis
Animation Magda Plevraki
Sokratis Galiatsakos
Music

Giannis Agelakas
Ermis Georgiadis
Aris RSN

Edit Aris Triantafillou
Camera Aris Papastefanou
ulia Reinecke
Coloring Thanos Tsantas
PR Michalis Alimanis
Contributors Aggeliki Gaidatzi
Fani Gaidatzi
Ioulia Kileri
Margarita Tsomou
Production Costas Efimeros
2011 - BitsnBytes.gr

http://www.debtocracy.gr/indexen.html

The struggle in the squares

Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou and his PASOK party government survived a June 21 confidence vote in parliament, but he will face continued mass protests as he pushes for yet more devastating austerity measures.

Greece is in the grips of a desperate economic crisis. The government has needed massive bailouts engineered by the European Union and International Monetary Fund, but they have come with the demand that the government slash spending, cut the wages and benefits of workers, and privatize public enterprises.

But a new mass movement has arisen to give voice to the anger of the mass of the population. Following the example of youth and workers in Spain--and before that, the Egyptian revolutionaries of Tahrir Square--the Greek "aganaktismenoi" ("indignants") have occupied public squares. On June 27 and 28, the so-called "movement of the squares" will demonstrate alongside the labor movement during a 48-hour general strike called as parliament is set to vote on yet more cutbacks.

Panos Petrou, a member of the socialist group Internationalist Workers Left (DEA) and a participant in the occupation in Athens' Syntagma Square, explains how this powerful new movement developed.

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ON MAY 25, tens of thousands of people responded to a call on Facebook to join a demonstration in Syntagma Square, a central square in Athens outside the parliament building. It was a rather spontaneous demonstration, inspired by the Spanish movement of the "Indignados" (the "Indignants") who were occupying Plaza del Sol in Madrid.

Weeks later, Syntagma Square remains occupied by thousands of people, and similar "camps" are functioning in many squares in many cities and towns all around Greece. A new protest movement--known as "the aganaktismenoi" (the Greek translation for the "Indignados") or the "movement of the squares"--has emerged, and it is now a social force that is further destabilizing the already shaken political system in Greece.

On the days before May 25 and immediately after, the mass media tried to flatter the people who came into the streets, simply to contain their actions. The press highlighted the weaknesses of the movement, praising them as its "gifts." The same political commentators who viciously attacked all kinds of social protest in the past, whether strikes or occupations or whatever, now glorified this "non-political movement of all Greeks against all parties."

They portrayed the movement in the way they wanted it to develop--as a "silent" expression of indignation against "politics," which would be harmless for the capitalist class.MORE