Thread by @iopapadimitriou

So, understanding Greece:

1/ During the previous lockdown the Greek government commissioned a private company to distribute 20 million euros to media in order to play "Stay At Home" ads. This allowed them to bypass transparency regulations in public advertising funds.

2/ The list of media (known as the "Petsas list" after government spokesperson Stelios Petsas) that received funding was not made public despite repeated calls for transparency. After intense pressure, Petsas gave a list of media that received funding without the allocated sums.

3/ The list included non-existent media that had received funding. Then, after widespread furor, a new list with the sums allocated was given to publicity. It was discovered that opposition media had received less than 1% of the sum in total. Others were outright excluded.

4/ To this day, transparency watchdog @vouliwatch has been filing FOI requests in all relevant authorities to learn the terms under which the money was distributed to media.

vouliwatch.gr/news/article/m…

5/ The issue made it all the way to the Council of Europe. The brief reads: "Greek media critical of the government were excluded or side-lined from a €20 million financial support scheme during the Covid-19 pandemic."

bit.ly/3mzGkBV

6/ In August, we reported on the issue and the disastrous state of the Greek media landscape with @The_Manifold for @globalfreemedia. You can read our report here:

ipi.media/the-covid-19-c…

7/ So where does the headline "understanding Greece" come in? After all this, they announced they would do it again: the Greek government will channel 2million euros to national broadcasters for them to play what should be public health announcements broadcast for free.

8/ Of course, all national broadcasters are pro-government.