Greek government plans new state broadcaster

(Vatican Radio) The Greek government today said it would crate a new state-run media organization from the ground up, free of the faults of the previous network which was abolished by a stroke of the pen yesterday.

An official spokesman said the new entity would employ at most 1,200 people and be run on strictly non-political and non-profit lines, and start up later in the summer.

The government stunned Greeks yesterday when it took the axe to the country’s 80-year-old state broadcaster on the grounds that it was a den of corruption, political vested interests, and far too expensive for a country in deep crisis to run. It was revealed that some key anchorpeople and others behind the camera had been receiving wildly inflated salaries even when not working.

Greece’s leftwing opposition parties rallied outside the state broadcaster headquarters here in Athens today, while a skeleton staff tried to put together a programme on the internet. The leader of the leftwing Syriza opposition party, Alexis Tsipras, called on Greek president Karolos Papoulias to ask him to reverse the government’s decision. Papoulias clucked sympathetically, but claimed he had not the slightest power to influence or change government decisions.

Unusually, raising his voice against the decision was the Greek church head, Archbishop Ieronymos, who said a state network was necessary as an alternative to the commercial broadcasters.

As Greece’s journalists staged a 24-hour news blackout today in protest at the shutdown, most Greeks just shrugged. ET1, the main state news channel, was very low in the ratings, way behind the private commercial channels, and few are going to really lament its passing.

Antonis Samaras, the prime minister, expects to let the storm rage for a few days. But he has no regrets about finally ending a continuing waste of billions of euros a year, especially as Greece’s creditors are in town, looking over his shoulder.

Listen to John Carr’s report: