By George Angelakis,
It has been almost an entire year since the EU announced that it would grant funding of almost 5 million euros for a series of EU projects promoting media freedom and pluralism. It also announced that it would renew for one year its funding for the Media Pluralism Monitor project implemented by the Centre for Media Pluralism and Freedom. This funding, however small, was to help combat sensationalism in news outlets throughout Europe. Yet, almost a year later, nothing seems to have changed.
Media objectivity should not be a utopian far-fetched dream but a goal we need to achieve as soon as possible. Not even the oldest, still-existing, newspapers in our country have not managed to overcome the periodic expression of dangerous sensationalism in their pages. Greece is one of the worst countries in Europe in maintaining media objectivity or monitoring media in general. We all have witnessed TV shows going rampant, disregarding and disrespecting every ounce of our psyche, websites breaking all the rules, constantly bombarding us with unfiltered, anti-journalistic, bulk “information” just to generate a slightly higher income. Not only journalism is no longer a practice, it barely still is a profession, in Greece at least.
Tackling sensationalism of course is not only the country’s obligation but it scales down to individuals as well. A solid strategy that anyone can follow, is to fact check not only the content of the article itself but the entire solidarity and veracity of the provider. Of course, sometimes that is not enough and that is the reason we need a stronger, more active board of professionals whose entire job would consist of monitoring all sensationalistic outlets and shutting them down in the name of the benefit of the public.
Sensationalism sometimes can be masterfully hidden in articles, especially the opinionated ones. It is a common secret, that many news providers, namely newspapers, follow some very strict political lines in the types of news they provide. Of course, eradicating any form of political prisms in such cases is neither desired nor achievable, yet when the objectivity of the entire news outlet is put at risk, it is paramount for someone to intervene.
Of course, journalists are definitely not the only ones to blame. In many instances, a form of soft censorship is applied to the journalists by the owners of the outlet in such ways as to promote their personal agenda, disregarding the essence of journalism and tampering with the outlet’s character. Adding to that, the existence of public funding of newspapers and stations in conglomeration with the uneven splitting of such funds can contribute the most in enlarging the lack of objectivity. Public funding of private entrepreneurships seems invalid and unnatural in any other case, so why should media outlets be excluded from that? In our modern world, spending money is strongly associated with promoting an agenda, and we would be fools to think that the state does not have one either, only ever so slightly altered from one political party to another. Many owners would not mind undermining their very own staffers, creating an ambiance of public distrust, fabricating or ignoring the existing infamy of their outlet in order to ensure a higher portion of the state’s pie; and we are talking millions.
In the end, everyone can realise that reverting to an older status of media objectivity is not a realistic scenario. Yet, the state, the media, and the people need to adapt and alter their approach to collecting, sharing and receiving information. The solution to sensationalism is neither easy nor fast and needs a coordinated effort by all sides in order to succeed or at least ameliorate the existing state of things. There is not a single place to start from or a definite end to such efforts but one thing is for sure: it is high time we started trying.
