What happened to Journalism

Annamaria on Monday

I know you have seen this before. (Thanks again, Stan.)
As far as I am concerned, it cannot be seen enough,

Ask around with this question, and many of the answers you discover will blame the current sad state of journalism on the dawn of digital media.  This is only partially true.  Spreading lies, as you would imagine, long predated the invention of the iPhone.  Digital information did however make it much easier to spread misinformation.

I was inspired to look into and cogitate about this subject by a shock I received.  An email from the progressive organization MoveOn contained this statement about the Trump administration: “So he and his cronies have begun pushing dangerous conspiracy theories to explain his failures—and, as usual, the media is playing right into his hands.”

What I thought?  It’s the right-wing that usually makes this sort of statement.  They are the ones who have, in the USA anyway, turned the words “the media” into a pejorative, as in the statement above.  Imagine if it said, “the free press is playing right into his hands.”  No one would seek to condemn journalism in general by calling it “the free press.” If one is finding fault with it, it is “the media.”

 Problem is these days it is hard to tell the difference between journalism based on facts and other forms of writing.

True journalism, in other words the reporting of the truth, follows rules.  It does not pass off lies as the truth.  It shares fact checked information.  It does not intermix it with questionable statements or opinions and make them all look like the same thing.

Let’s take a quick look at some definitions:

Fact: a thing that is known or proved to be true.

News: newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events.  Note: In professional news reporting this “information” must be based on assurances that the report contains facts.  Where such reports offer opinions, they are given as such and attributed to the holder of the opinion along with his or her credentials to opine on the subject at hand.

In the old days, when the news came printed on paper, reliable publications let readers know the difference between the news and their editors' opinions by what page they put them on.  They kept their opinions for a special “editorial” section.  Broadcast, tabloid, and especially digital reporting seem to have blurred these boundaries until they have just about disappeared.   

Then there are the black sheep of journalism:

Propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

Yellow Journalism: journalism that is based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration.  This dastardly technique has been around for a long time.

These are techniques meant, not to inform the public so people can make their own judgments, but to manipulate them into thinking the way some power grabbers want them to think.

The latest addition to these enemies of an informed electorate is Fake News.

It terrifies me to have to say that, these days, what is available for public consumption is a complete mishmash of all of the above.  Worst of all, those in power have so manipulated public opinion against "the media" that even the most trustworthy outlets of factual, reliable journalism are mistrusted and disregarded, while a large segment of the population have become addicted to propaganda purveyors, who slant everything in the direction of what they want to hear.  This hardens their belief in propaganda and fake news.

As the enemies of professional journalism fully intend, this turns any democracy into a pale, frail, moribund version of the sinewy, vital form of government that it used to be.

If you care about this, I urge you to check out these two ways of learning about journalism:

A greatly entertaining TV series that shows what it takes to cover the news well and how it can go awry.

A podcast that discusses current events and how the media is covering them.  Fascinating in every way.

Rodney Dangerfieldopoulos

One of the things I’ve always loved about the Greeks is their sense of humor.  We share that same warped trait.  So what the hell is going on over there?

Here I am, trying to decide what to write in my last US-based blog for quite a while when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a story in Wednesday’s ekathimerini.com (the web content provider for Greece’s most respected newspaper) about a group of Greek lawyers suing a German-based travel writer for libel in Greece (an imprisonable offence there) for having written allegedly offensive things about Greece in a magazine article the writer claims was, at most, satirical.  (That’s him, Klaus Boetig, in the photo above, not the late American comedian Rodney Dangerfield who’s famous for the line, “I get no respect.”)

They say the first thing to go is the sense of humor.  If that’s the case this Grecophile is in serious trouble.  Perhaps I should check the plane schedules to Turkey.  I’m sure the Turks would be more tolerant of humorous musings on their neighbor—though I doubt they’d take to kindly to the use of Constantinople in the dateline.

So, what was in that Greek newspaper article by Harry van Versendaal?  Click on this link for the whole thing, but here’s the opening:

Klaus Boetig set foot in Greece for the first time on Christmas Day of 1972. He came on a train from Germany and spent the night at a cheap hostel in Plaka. Since then, the 63-year-old Bremen-based author has visited Greece almost every year and written more than 70 travel guides on all parts of the country. Many of these have been translated into more than 10 different European languages and three have been published in Greek. His travel pieces have appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines and information brochures, including a German publication prepared by the Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO).

Ironically, Boetig tries to avoid Greece these days. Two years ago, his name was embroiled in a controversy that still lingers.

It all began when the German weekly news magazine Focus came out with the now-infamous cover depicting the iconic Venus de Milo statue draped in a Greek flag and showing her middle finger. “Cheats in the Euro family,” read the headline. The cheats, of course, were the Greeks.

The distasteful cover

The publication, which was published on February 22, 2010, prompted a group of Greek lawyers to sue a dozen staff journalists at Focus as well as Boetig, a freelancer, for defamation and libel. Boetig, the prosecutor said at the time, consciously misguided readers about the character of the Greek people.

Boetig's article was headlined: “Culture shock: Can the Greeks be understood?” A court summons summed up the author's alleged claims: “The Greeks live off borrowed money; they maintain clientelistic relations with the country's politicians in order to protect their illegal homes; they make rules only to break them; they use their religion to solve all their problems; they don't know how to read; they do not respect their working hours and, finally, they use the European Union's tourism funds to build private residences.”

Katerina Fragaki, one of the Greek lawyers who filed the lawsuit, slams the article as “an insult to our honor and integrity.”

She says the authors made and distributed false claims about the Greeks while knowing that those claims were false. Moreover, Fragaki adds, the cover and the articles carried comments and opinions that, directly or indirectly, vilify the Greek people, their history and their culture. “These articles in effect put in doubt the social and moral value of Greek society and disparage its integrity,” she says.

Lost in translation

From his home in Germany, Boetig claims it's all a big misunderstanding. He describes how he was contacted by the online edition of Focus to contribute a story for the website's tourism section. “I was told it should be witty, funny and even ironic like the other articles for these series before. I agreed.”

And so it continues.

I thought of redacting the “the author’s alleged claims” so as not to offend my Greek friends by repeating them.  But then I read them carefully, and realized by that in light of all the disparaging things that have been said about Greece in the world press, to omit them might give rise to thoughts in a reader’s mind of things much worse.  Even as stretched for purposes of litigation, virtually all of the alleged claims have been publically lodged before in one form or another, some even on the very floor of Greece’s Parliament by a sitting Prime Minister. 

Frankly, I don’t get the lawsuit against the writer.  Even if his article were intended as serious and bore not a scintilla of accuracy, I think this plainly dedicated group of Greek lawyers would have served the integrity of their countrymen far better by going after any of those who did some of the deeds accused rather than the accuser.

I just don’t see where putting a travel writer in jail for libel would do faintly as much to positively pump up Greek morale as would putting in jail just one of those every Greek knows should be put away.

And before anyone says, “You don’t understand, the wrongdoers can no longer be prosecuted for their crimes,” I say, “Put on your thinking caps, do something creative that will do more to benefit your country than suing foreign journalists.”

And to the “Yeah, like what?” response I say:

“I’m willing to bet that whatever law no longer allows the guilty to be prosecuted surely does not allow wrongdoers to keep their ill-gotten gains.  So, lawyers of Greece unite and use your creative skills to recover what rightfully belongs to the people of Greece.”

That is how to truly serve Greece and inspire the morale of its people.

Leonidas, Greek hero-king of Sparta

Perhaps I should fly under an assumed name.  Any suggestions?

Saturday—Molon Labe