Independent journalism and watchdog reporting in Greece faces challenges from many sides.

In the last few years, the country has experienced the broad-daylight murder of a crime reporter, multiple threats to the safety of journalists, a sprawling surveillance and spyware scandal and numerous vexatious lawsuits and legal threats against media and journalists, with detrimental consequences for Greek democracy.

However, these immediate challenges sit atop deeper historical and systemic issues including a problematic landscape for independent journalism, weak media pluralism, prolonged economic threats to media viability, entrenched capture of private media by powerful families and owners, and low levels of trust in media.

Greece suffers, in short, from media capture.

A new report, published on 30 January, looks in detail at this situation in Greece for the first time, with damming conclusions about the scale of media capture in Greece, and its impact on the country’s democracy.

Guests: Danai Maragoudaki, a journalist at Greek investigative media outlet Solomon, who also works for The Manifold

Producer and Host: Jamie Wiseman, Europe Advocacy Officer at International Press Institute (IPI)

Editor: Javier Luque, Head of Digital Communications at IPI

Other episodes in this series:

Navigating Hungary’s Sovereignty Protection Act – Media Freedom In Focus

Under illegal surveillance – the Greek ‘Predatorgate’ – Media Freedom In Focus

Related links:

New report examines media capture in Greece

Report: Stemming the tide of Greek media freedom decline

This podcast series is part of the MFRR in Focus project sponsored by Media Freedom Rapid Response, which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States and Candidate Countries. The MFRR is organised by a consortium led by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) including ARTICLE 19 Europe, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), Free Press Unlimited (FPU), International Press Institute (IPI) and CCI/Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT).

For more in-depth podcast episodes about the state of press freedom in Europe, visit the MFRR website or search MFRR In Focus on your podcasts apps. The MFRR is co-funded by the European Commission.