Background
In a provocative article (link in Greek) published on Saturday, May 9th, the newspaper, ‘Efimerida to Syntakton’ (EFSYN) alleged that individuals at the Bank of Greece were seeking to actively undermine the government through targeted leaks of information to the press.
EFSYN effectively alleged the existence of a conspiracy where, "arguments are being provided to journalists in order to achieve the aim, namely that the first government of the Left become a mere parenthesis."
As proof of this plot, the paper cited an email that it had obtained. Specifically the email concerned data about the course of the economy in the first 100 days of the new government.
The email writes in full:
The accounting of the first 100 days
And this is before the discussion over bankruptcy even beings… and without being able to calculate the investment doldrums which generally undermines the economy in general…
So we have…
- 20-35 billion euros in deposit flight to foreign bonds or mattresses
- 20 – 30 billion euro drop in values of Greek companies, listed and not
- 10 [billion] in repos
- 3 [billion euros] of European structural funds is frozen. We should have received 4 and instead received only 1.
- 20 billion in legal tender is missing from circulation
- The fall in the property market
- There is 3 billion euros less in the market from the state’s non payment of bills to private individuals
- Also to the damage one must add the stoppage of payments by private individuals to banks which have additional non performing loans, banks which acquired the problem on top and may need new recapitalization!!
The EFSYN article ended by demanding a response from the Bank of Greece’s governor about ‘his colleague's’ email, implying that the leader of the BoG himself be involved in the attempts to damage the government.
The article touched off a firestorm with the government releasing a statement in which it said that if the paper’s allegations were true ‘it was a blow to the independence of the BoG’. It called on the BoG to mobilize disciplinary proceedings ‘in order to stop some in its interior from harming the government at such a critical moment for the country.’
For its part the BoG refuted EFSYN’s assertion that it was behind the email, writing, ‘The BoG announces that no email was ever sent with the content described in the article in question either from the office of the governor, Yiannis Stournaras, nor from the Communications Department of the Bank.’
In a subsequent article published today, EFSYN doubled down on the story and directly named TheTOC as being involved in the alleged conspiracy to actively discredit the government.
For the journalists at EFSYN, whether the facts in the email are true or not is apparently beside the point. The fact that emails between officials and journalists are how reporters actually do their jobs also apparently fails to dissuade them from seeing the email as evidence of a grand conspiracy.
They write that “the content alone of the email alone is enough to reveal the aim: to undermine the first government of the Left in order that the Tsipras government be, as the leader of New Democracy desires, ‘merely a left parenthesis’.”
But how EFSYN leaps to this conclusion from the email in question is only one troubling aspect about the newspaper’s reporting.
The second, and perhaps more damaging, is that the paper potentially obtained the email through illegal wire-tapping. As a result publishing the email by the paper would constitute an illegal act under Greek law.
Today, TheTOC’s president Elli Stai responded to EFSYN’s accusation of conspiracy writing the following:
The true conspiracy against a free press
The TOC was created with the aim of responsibly serving the freedom of the press and change. Because we are living in times of great changes and the citizens must be objectively informed.
And here a dangerous tragicomedy begins from the Efimerida ton Syntakton with its article today which presents us as accomplices in a conspiracy against the government! Because we simply published dry economic data about the tenure of the government SYRIZA – ANEL without having taken a position on them! Is the publishing of objectively valid data, cross checked as basic journalistic ethics and good practice require, evidence of a conspiracy? Or is it a conspiracy when this data concerns the performance of a government (whichever government) and mustn’t (therefore) come to the attention of the citizenry? What should we choose according to the ‘Efimerida Ton Syntakton’ – abstention or muzzling?
This ‘light’ was what was shown to us in the ‘revealing’ (and perhaps illicit??) article in EFSYN. To us, the ignorant, they us showed our national impropriety. We revealed, they said, data which promotes the bankruptcy of the country – data almost ‘nuclear’ and top secret. (And really we are talking about data that has already been published and which we amassed and cross-checked before we published it. That is the reality.)
We wrote, therefore, that the deposit flight from the banks was 30-35 billion over recent weeks. The first ‘nuclear bombshell’. We wrote that there have been about 10 billion euros in repos from public bodies. The second bombshell. That 20 billion euros is missing from circulation.
Can you handle more? We also wrote the inconceivable, that the economy and the market are suffocating from a lack of liquidity. So the HQ of our site set off all of these ‘nuclear bombshells’.
And then there’s the pinnacle.
All of this data we obtained from journalistic sources. What a crime! Whereas, according to the charge sheet, we should have consulted with the neighborhood baker or greengrocer. Is that how EFSYN would like to see journalism done in our country? To go to journalistic practices of sub-Saharan Africa? Because at least in the West and the advanced countries in America and Europe, it is usually done with information from competent sources.
And where is the freedom of the press in all this?
But that is not all, as this attempt to silence through baseless criticism is based on a stolen email! Which they indeed happily publish and advertise thus rendering their supposed criticism a criminal offence, as well as the allegation itself – that is the conspiracy against the government due to the publishing of objective economic data!
Whoever soberly reads the stole email will ascertain that it has only economic data. No judgments, criticisms or comments. Is that a conspiracy? Or perhaps the real conspiracy is the accusation of conspiracy itself? Perhaps the real plot is the paper which conspires to allege non-existent conspiracies? That is the real issue for democracy. Because we cannot, in the depths of the crisis, pollute the public discourse we serve with lies, twisted imaginings of non-existent conspiracies causing confusion among the wider public. Who created the real conspiracy about a supposed conspiracy and why?
The first government of the left should take a position on this serious issue. Is this its logic? Are these its principles? We don’t want to believe so. But we beg they assure us that it doesn’t need self-proclaimed defenders – ‘hired guns’ who use stolen emails to censor, who create conspiracies to silence the free press. As is known a free press has no bosses. That apples for all – and surely for us.
The TOC is not going to be silenced by such practices. We will not cave in, in the battle for a free press and in the fight for a change in this country for the better.
And to EFSYN just one comment: how sad!
P.S. The competent authorities (prosecutor, Authority for Communication Security and Privacy, and Hellenic Parliament) must prove that justice prevails in the country. As it goes without saying that The TOC and its journalists will continue their reporting on the key issues concerning society and the country, such as the issue of illegal wiretaps.
Additionally, the issue will be soon put before the relevant institutions, legal and others, both in Greece and abroad.
Ellis Stai
President of TheToc.gr
Οι πιο πρόσφατες Ειδήσεις
Διαβάστε πρώτοι τις Ειδήσεις για ό,τι συμβαίνει τώρα στην Ελλάδα και τον Κόσμο στο thetoc.gr
