This week, I managed to escape the city. Thanks to the
wonders of the Internet, I’m now slaving over a hot keyboard as I sit at a
battered kitchen table several decades older than me, under the shade of a
feral grape vine in the back yard of my in-laws’ small country house an hour’s
drive from Athens.
And yet, although the insistent buzz of the cicadas
has replaced the city’s shouts and sirens as my workday soundtrack, my escape
is incomplete. The noisy insects have a rival for the attention of my eardrums
– the relentless drone, and occasional explosion, of wall-to-wall TV news from
the moment my husband’s parents make their morning coffee til late at night
when they head for their bed.
Like many things in the country, the Greek way of
delivering broadcast news takes some getting used to – especially if, like me,
you’ve been raised on a diet of BBC’s Radio 4, ITN’s News at Ten or (on
particularly daring days) Channel 4 News.
Greek news broadcasts are an entirely different beast.
Though the main channels aspire to the standards set by Auntie Beeb, CNN, even
Al Jazeera, with fancy opening titles, dramatic music and somber-faced
anchormen, they don’t quite deliver.
For domestic news, especially politics, the main order
of the day – every day – is shouting. Loudly, insistently and without a care
for whether viewers can actually make any sense of what they’re watching. In a
news technique particularly loved by the country’s private TV channels, a panel
of guests are invited to (ahem) ‘debate’ the issues of the day, with each
talking head shown on screen in a separate ‘parathyraki’
(little window). Perhaps it harks back to the days when the news of the day was
passed from window to window in the villages that many Greeks still consider
their ancestral home.
In reality, guests will probably be seated around the
same table in the studio, but on screen we see each one in their own little
box. And even before newsreader finishes their intro, we know that that three
or four of squares will spend much of the following debate staring blankly out
at us, saying nothing but looking increasingly frustrated and taking sneaky
peeks at their watches, while the two most vocal – or extreme – members of the
panel with go at it hammer and tongs. Most times, it’s little more than a
formalised slanging match, a legitimised form of a schoolyard brawl (quite
literally in a recent case), that viewers can justify watching in the name of
staying abreast of the news of the day.
Almost everyone complains about the news programmes,
whether it be for their sensationalism, political bias or obsession with
plunging necklines for female newscasters. But the older generation, a
highly-politicised group who built their lives against a backdrop of post-WW2
hardship, civil war, military dictatorship, the return of democracy and a
period of prosperity before the current storm, stay loyal.
Not so, however, their children and grandchildren.
They have grown up with, or been born into, the digital age. More and more, the
theme tune of the morning, midday, early evening, mid evening and late night
news is their cue to switch off, change channel or head out of the room for a toilet
break. It’s not that they don’t want to be informed – though many would love to
be able to simply turn a blind eye to the daily diet of doom and gloom – they
just don’t trust the TV to deliver anymore.
Civilian journalism is on the rise. Countless blogs
and portals have sprung up to keep the citizens of Greece – and beyond – abreast of
what’s going on, and what’s not, in the country. Some are reliable. Others
little more than rumour-mills. Some are highly professional. Others would make
a fifth grade school project look good. Some strive to maintain balance. Others
have a clear (or worse, hidden) political axe to grind. Here, as elsewhere, the
extreme open access nature of the www is both its blessing and its curse.
Since I first arrived in Athens 23 years ago, the news landscape has
changed beyond recognition. Then, TV was a stark choice of what was on the menu
of the state-sponsored broadcaster, ERT. Today, myriads of private channels vie
for the attention of your living room, and more and more people go online for
their updates.
Babble is the order of the day, even in the idyllic
Greek countryside. Most humble country retreats are equipped with antennas, so
even when sipping your frappe over a game of backgammon on a balcony with a
view of the Aegean, there’s always a timely
reminder of the impending doom to compete with the shimmering summer heat and
incessant cicadas.
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