Dia Anagnostou

Journalists’ Self-regulation in Greece

The evolution of the Greek media policy has been characterised for years by an essentially government-centred model of policy-making that has been profoundly influenced by particularistic business interests and the willingness of successive governments to retain control over the media sector (Psychogiopoulou, Kandyla and Anagnostou, 2012). State intervention into the realm of the media has been strong, and the media have been widely used as a means to political or other ends. This explains why Greece was considered to fall within the Mediterranean media system model identified by Hallin and Mancini (2004). Key features of this model are media instru- mentalisation, low journalistic professionalisation and robust state intervention in the development of the media and media regulation.

Recasting the Contours of Media Policy in a Political Context: An Introduction

In the past few decades, the media have undergone a fundamental restructuring, along with the policies and tools that intervene to regulate them. Rapid technological change, the intensification of regulatory processes beyond the state, and changes in the dominant ideas regarding regulation and the nature and the role of the media within the society have all contributed to such a restructuring. The rise of neo-liberal ideas since the 1980s and the 1990s, and the increasing pressures on the state to withdraw from and privatise various sectors of the economy, has had a fundamental impact on the media. The emergence of commercial broadcasters under-mined the state monopoly in broadcasting, which prevailed in most of post-war Europe and challenged its underlying principles and social purpose. Technological advancements and the rise of the ‘new media’, first with the introduction of cable and trans-frontier satellite transmissions, then, more recently, with the emergence of online media services, were catalytic in this regard. They eroded the basis for the ‘scarcity of frequencies’ policy argument, bringing new challenges for policy makers in terms of media regulation. In addition, globalisation and the extensive mobility of capital have seriously undermined pre-existing forms of national regulation of the media.

Human Rights in European Prisons: Can the Implementation of Strasbourg Court Judgments Influence Penitentiary Reform Domestically?

This chapter explores the domestic implementation of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments that are related to overcrowding and poor material conditions in European prisons. The first part describes the processes and mechanisms of domestic implementation of ECtHR’s judgments, their supervision and monitoring by the Committee of Ministers, and the extent and the ways in which they can influence domestic reform of the penitentiary system. On the basis of an initial data set of 165 judgments, which we have compiled, the second part of the chapter provides an overview of the relevant ECtHR’s judgments and the issues that they raise, the states most frequently implicated, and the nature and range of measures that national authorities institute in response to the Strasbourg Court’s judgments that find violations of the Convention. The third part describes and discusses the kind of reforms and measures that national authorities undertake by way of implementing the general measures that are called for by the relevant ECtHR judgments.

The Greek Media Policy Revisited

The development of the Greek media has been directly linked to the country’s political system and the various social and economic interests that are represented in it. Throughout the 20th century, the Greek press became a pre-eminent field of political antagonism, with newspapers tied to different political parties. The transition from a military regime to democracy in 1974 put an end to the censorship of political views that were critical of the government, and restored fundamental rights, including the freedom of expression. The international trend towards broadcasting liberalisation from the early 1980s onwards, and Greece’s membership in the then European Economic Community, undermined the state’s monopoly over broadcasting (Papathanassopoulos, 1990: 392). In the second half of the 1980s, deregulation was sustained by a domestic political and economic crisis that reinforced the calls for media independence from political partisanship and state tutelage (Panagiotopoulou, 2010: 11). The advent of commercial broad-casting paved the way for a fundamental reshaping of media ownership structures in the country. It did not, however, bring an end to the multiple dependencies and interconnections between the various media outlets on the one hand, and the government and the dominant political parties on the other, which have profoundly marked the Greek media policy and the state’s efforts to regulate the media.