TV journalist turned New Democracy candidate: In 2012 planeloads of cash were flown into Greece but we buried the story

In June 2012, things were not looking good for Greece. The country was in between elections after a round of parliamentary elections in May failed to result in a government. Meanwhile amid the political instability, with a hard public line emanating from the troika over the country’s emergency bail-out program, the prospect of a disorderly default and exit from the eurozone was looking increasingly likely.

Nervous Greeks began to empty their bank accounts, fearful that their euros may be converted to drachmas overnight. Effectively a bank run was underway. As has since been revealed in the book The Default Line excerpted in this August 2013 article in the Daily Mail – the only reason why Greek banks did not run out of cash during that period is because, under secret orders from the authorities in Brussels and Berlin, billions of euros in hard cash were trucked and flown into the country.

Most Greeks had no idea that such an operation was underway – most but not all. Among those in the know was journalist Maria Spyraki. The reporter turned politician for New Democracy (she recently resigned her position as political correspondent at Mega channel in order to run for a European parliament seat in the upcoming elections) revealed in an interview this weekend that she knew of the operation and related banking crisis at the time but chose not to report it:

“Greece had a bank run between the elections in May and June of 2012. In reality, people went to the banks and withdrew their money. That is something that no one in my position could say… There was a very painful process. And there was the process of supplying Greece with cash. The plane would leave from Elefsina, go to Italy and return with cash which went to the Bank of Greece where it was shared out to the banks. We never reported that. We never had the right to report it. And obviously I can’t tell you who gave me that information but I got it from people who knew all of the details.”

To not report on an incipient bank run while it is underway can be considered justifiable. Journalists have a duty to inform, but also to be judicious with the information they obtain when releasing it may cause more harm than good – as in the case of a bank run.

However it appears that the decision by Ms Spyraki – and by extension Mega TV itself (it is incredibly unlikely that the editors at the station did not have the same information as Ms Spyraki) may have been less motivated by a desire to act in the public interest and more by a desire to fit the facts to supporting a hard pro-Memorandum line.

Why, after the banking crisis had passed, did the station not report the story about the secret flights? Why did more than a year have to pass before the story was reported first in the British press? Was it not in the public interest to know the lengths the eurozone leaders were willing to go to in order to prevent Greece from exiting the euro?

Perhaps even more revealing than Ms Spyrakis’s revelation was another admission by Mega TV’s news anchor Yiannis Pretenderis. In a January 2013 interview regarding a book written by the anchor about the crisis with iefimerida.gr, Mr Pretenderis said the following when asked about errors the press had made during the crisis:

“The restructuring of the debt: we all knew from the first moment that it wasn’t sustainable, but they told us, don’t say it now, it’s not right. The result was that until 2012 everyone maintained that the debt was sustainable and we didn’t respond, ‘not it isn’t!’ We didn’t tell them that this is nonsense. That was self-restraint.”

Can anyone really blame Greeks for feeling misled by the press as well as the political class when one of the top news anchors in the country effectively admits that he failed to challenge outright lies for months? Who did that benefit?

Mainstream media in Greece, and particularly Mega Channel, have been criticized because of their ‘incestuous’ (as the State Department qualified the relationship in a now infamous wikileaks cable) link to the country’s political and business establishment. According to a 2012 Reuters special report, a nexus of media, business and politics lies behind the country's crisis. Both Ms Spyraki and Mr. Pretenderis worked for Mega Channel, a TV station controlled in part by the Bobolas family which has extensive business interests spanning the sectors of construction, highway concessions, waste management, and mining. The family also holds important stakes in newspapers that have been loyal in their support for all governments since the 2009 fiscal crisis.

But while channels like Mega are often more than happy to slam the country’s politicians when it suits them (politicians that they often helped elect), they have been far less willing to turn their criticism on themselves. But the industry needs to look long and hard at itself and to make changes if it is to regain the public’s trust.

For democracies to function properly they require a well-informed citizenry. And that can only happen if those responsible for providing information do so objectively in the interest of the public, and not in the service of specific policies, concealing inconvenient facts. Abusing information is what got Greece into its current mess (through concealing the height of its deficits) and once in a hole, one should stop digging. 

This publication has been produced with the assistance of the European Union. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso and its partners and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union. The project's page: Safety Net for European Journalists. A Transnational Support Network for Media Freedom in Italy and South-east Europe.