Mitsotakis couple and the media, lifestyle and keyhole

Ο Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, is one of the richest people on the planet. But in 2007 and 2011 did not pay any tax, using accounting tricks. In fact, in 2011 he got a 1500 $ government grant for his son, who is a student!

At Amazon's facilities, 7% of staff are victims of workplace accidents. The company uses a strict system to monitor the productivity of workers, who often complain that they don't even have time to go to the toilet. The number of accidents is 80% more than in the facilities of companies with similar scope of work.

As we learned from a non-paper, sent yesterday morning by the Maximou building, Bezos met with the Mitsotakis couple over the weekend. Show me your friend and I'll tell you who you are? Not exactly, as a prime minister is often obliged to meet tycoons, whether he likes it or not.

The problem starts with «showing my friends», that is, when you make it a dive. Non papers are a way of informally informing the media on political issues. For the first time it was used for life style information, as it did not contain any substantial information of interest to the country and its citizens.. We have just learned that Mr Mitsotakis and his wife were the guests of Hollywood business tycoon and producer Barry Diller and his wife, top designer Diane von Furstenberg, who are on holiday in the Aegean. And they were at a table with Bezos, Tom Hanks, his wife Rita Wilson and a CNN reporter.

The incident might have occupied the secular columns of some newspapers or the gossip columns of the morning newsmen, but Mr Mitsotakis wanted to make it a topic in all the media. Obviously the man is living his myth. It's not easy to become prime minister when your mother didn't even believe you. But if the Prime Minister and his wife make their private life a public issue, they should not then complain if some opposition media are concerned with Mrs Mitsotakis.

The other problem is with the media, which ran to follow the indirect directive of Maximos. Of course you won't find anything about Bezos' extraordinary tax avoidance skills or the galley conditions in his businesses. They are all so enchanted by the meal - and the money - that they cannot articulate a word of criticism.

The comic tragedy of the Greek media is now a matter of international interest. On the occasion of the murder of Caroline in Sweet Waters, the authoritative Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung had an extensive report on the the undeclared racism of the Greek media, who «as they very often do, began to speculate about the involvement of foreigners, without having any evidence of this. In many reports, the central idea was that only Albanians or Georgians could be so brutal as to commit such a crime».

But the newspaper was also impressed with the low quality of the journalistic coverage:

«In the Greek media, serious crimes are not just reported as news, but are the main menu of the news in the prime time zone. Both public and private TV stations adopt a tabloid journalism with journalists, police officers, psychologists and neighbours spreading scripts and indiscretions. Every step of the judicial investigation is announced in real time, the public is ‘briefed’ on any suspicion or case, even the most immature.».

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung tries to find an explanation for media ownership: «The Greek media - TV stations, newspapers or news websites - are owned by big industrialists, who have little interest in quality journalism., while they often depend on advertising money from the state or banks, which they secure through their good relations at the political level.

Anyone who is friendly to the government, or at least not critical of it, can expect more money. This is another reason why low-cost keyhole journalism fills the newscasts. According to relevant surveys people's trust in the media has been steadily declining for years, in 2019 only 27% of respondents said they trusted the traditional media»(the translation from the German is by Doyce Velle)

According to the Reuters Institute's annual report, which was carried out in collaboration with Oxford University, covering a total of 46 countries, Greece ranks 38th in terms of media credibility. Among the 24 European countries, it languishes in 3rd place from the bottom.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Greece 70th in the Global Press Freedom Index. Injustice, as Pretenderis would say: you are free to write whatever you want about the sumptuous dinner in Antiparos...