Media Bias and Censorship in Greece: The Difference Between Mainstream Portrayal of Greek “NO” Protesters, and Reality

Propaganda?:

The Guardian video starts with a few Greek protesters hanging a banner with the word oxi, or NO. This will be telling of how their “coverage” of NO protesters will proceed throughout. The “journalist” then goes to a NO protest, and appears to randomly pick out one woman. She clearly does not speak English well, and is chosen specifically to make it seem as though the average NO protester does not know why he or she protests. She will return later, but first the reporter goes out to interview a well-educated professor, and then a division manager– both of whom are YES men. Her tone changes from critical, as in the first “interview”, to sympathetic and conciliatory with these two “cooler heads”. Their views are clearly articulated.

Literally two of the three views chosen in the video covers YES men, and at the end the slightly-desperate-looking NO protester from the beginning is trotted out, with no patients at her hospital. We see why this woman was chosen, because her hospital is used to highlight the effects of capital controls. Hier views are used to highlight the “irony” of NO voters who would destroy themselves- they do not understand what they are doing, according the The Guardian. The reporter does NOT seem interested in finding out if this state of affairs was the norm prior to the referendum, and then states that this horror-movie-hospital-scene  would somehow get worse in the event of a NO vote.

Seriously?! You’ll get NEGATIVE patients in a NO vote? Or will the end of an unpayable debt, with strangling interest and austerity requirements that have failed to solve ANY of Greece’s problems in the last 5 years in fact lead to a reversal of this situation? There will be hell to pay in the short-run, but the Greek economy will survive better without crippling debt. It has done so for HUNDREDS of years before the 22-year-old EU even came to being.

At the end of the video, the YES camp is made to look large, of similar size to the NO camp. But the reality is that they were probably a few hundred at the most; notice how the mainstream media LOVES to zoom in on the crowd- with people packed into the shot- when they can’t get a zoomed-out version that doesn’t look pathetic?

Think I’M the one being biased? Check out the size of a proper NO protest:

You THINK the Greek people would turn out in such numbers for no reason at all? Or is this the real voice of the people, ignored in favor of the voices of the chosen “academic”, and the businessman?

When the reporter asks a man at the end if he was feeling the impact of capital controls, he is particularly careful to say “definitely, definitely- just these two days”- as though life in Greece was just fine before the prospect of referendum came about.

There is an intense push to replace the Greek govt with a more…. Euro-friendly one… by faulting it for doing exactly what the people had elected it to do. It is only fitting that in the birthplace of democracy, the mandate be passed to the people. This is not what the mainstream politician desires, however. He would rather be given a mandate to do any heinous act he wants, “because the people chose him”, and this is what the woman at the end of the Guardian piece seems to want. Switzerland happens to hold referendums all the time, and it is one of the most prosperous European nations.

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