Only 27 per cent of Greeks expressed trust towards the media, and 54 per cent stated that it actively avoided the news – the main two reasons stated were the lack of trust and depression (Newman et al., 2019).
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In this general climate of mistrust towards traditional media, Greeks turn to online news websites for their daily information (92%), reading between five to six different news sources daily. However, the native news platforms do not invest in research and development regarding news formats. For native online news platforms, click-bait technique was still the main way of gathering page views, while most of the articles were up to 300 words, including, in some cases, embedded tweets, image galleries, or television news clips. Popular news websites also use live blogging to report on breaking news.
Generally, the news media of Greece are characterised by conventional news formats. Printed newspapers, most of them tabloid-sized with a few exceptions, include journalistic texts of all types (editorial, reportage, feature articles, opinion articles and columns, and interviews), framed by a great variety of images. The online versions of these newspapers are mostly based on content made for the printed version, adopting the basic features of online journalism. Nevertheless, there are some online news media adopting innovative news formats, compared with the legacy media and their online versions.
Private television channels and public service broadcaster ERT incorporate several news bulletins and news-related talk shows in their flow, employing conventional formats of news presentations, such as recorded videos, live panels and multi-guest interviews in studio, outdoor broadcast interviews, Skype interviews, and telephone interviews. All television channels operate their website with a section devoted to releasing news on current affairs and another section of web television, where visitors can find and watch news programmes that were already broadcast on free-to-air terrestrial television, at a later date. Private television channels, compared to the public service broadcaster ERT, usually adopt more sensationalist forms of news presentations, particularly in the context of infotainment and soft news television magazines.
The public service broadcaster ERT spends a great part of its programming time on news and news-related talk shows. The main news report is at 21:00 (50 min. including news on sports and the weather report). However, the first news report is at 10:00 each day (15 min.), followed by the noon news report at 15:00 (50 min.) and the late-night news report at midnight (15 min.). The evening news report is at 18:00 (10 min.) and includes sign language. Most commercial channels have a news report at noon, one in the evening (also in sign language), and one in the prime-time zone. Over the last years, political talk shows and debates have been absent from commercial television. Moreover, despite the fact that most of the editors-in-chief expressed their support for investigative journalism, the reporting process seemed to be reduced to the bare minimum under the pretext of the need to cut costs.
Furthermore, the Greek version of Euronews – a European and multilingual news television channel based in Lyon-Écully in France – is the only 24-hour news channel in Greek available online. However, there are foreign 24-hour news television channels provided to the audience via satellite.
In radio, a common feature shared by almost all stations is short news flashes every full hour. However, the radio stations focusing on information over entertainment, apart from short news bulletins, also broadcast hard news-related talk shows, where daily current affairs are reported and analysed by journalists, through the lens of political actors or experts. In these broadcasts, news is provided to the audience through pre-recorded sound-bite interviews, or live interviews conducted in studios or by telephone. Public service radio stations and most of the private radio stations are also available as web radio, or they offer podcasts to the public on specific websites.
In spite of low circulation, newspapers still set the news agenda (Papathanassopoulos, 2005). Both in radio and television morning shows, the newspapers’ front pages remain a point of discussion. Due to fierce competition and motivated by sensationalising strategy, newspapers have turned to a more tabloid-like format (Diana, 2019). Moreover, during their online transition, the newspapers’ tabloid appearance was transported to the online environment in the hopes that users would feel familiar with the online layout. However, newspapers failed to use the potential provided by the web (Veglis, 2005). This is nowhere more visible than on the mobile apps: Most of the main newspapers have a mobile app with simple functions and notifications leading nowhere, elements resulting in bad user reviews and no more than a few hundred downloads.
