State surveillance and court cases: The lonely fight for press freedom of Greece’s independent media

by Alessio Giussani

 

Part 3 - State surveillance

 

These new outlets, which include Reporters United but also Solomon and The Manifold, half-jokingly call themselves “marides”, Greek for “whitebait”, yet are catching big stories. But at a cost.

Editors at Reporters United were sued for hundreds of thousands of euros for a story they ran into the ties of the nephew and then-Secretary General of the Prime Minister Grigoris Dimitriadis with the spyware industry.

"Even if you are not going to lose the case, these lawsuits cost a lot, and take up your time and energy," Stavros Malichudis, who is used to facing legal threats as an investigative reporter at non-profit outfit Solomon, told Euronews.

But lawsuits are just the tip of the iceberg.

Malichudis was the first journalist found to have been placed under state surveillance while reporting on migration issues on the island of Kos.  

"Stavros [Malichudis]’s surveillance deeply affected the mental health of the whole team," Solomon’s managing editor Iliana Papangeli said. Fearing for their personal safety and that of their sources, she and her colleagues decided to sublet their ground-floor office in Athens and switch to fully remote work.

Things are not much better on social media, where journalists working on migration issues are often accused of being foreign agents.

Source, links:

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/02/20/state-surveillance-and-court-cases-the-lonely-fight-for-press-freedom-of-greeces-independe

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