Starting with the press, the findings from the interviews conducted with media professionals pointed towards press journalists relying on a few official sources and partnerships with foreign newspapers. The main institutional source of Greek newspapers is the Athens News Agency – Macedonian Press Agency, and at the same time, each newspaper has partnerships with foreign newspapers and agencies such as Reuters.
“We have The Guardian to begin with. Each day some items get in with the signature of The Guardian […] of course there are the classic deals with Reuters and other big agencies”, said one editor-in-chief. However, the press journalists argued that when receiving news through news agencies or public relations sources, they are only used as a starting point, adding to that their own research and analysis. As one of the interviewed journalists described: “Everything that comes in as news is assessed and researched, it’s not reproduced in any case. At least in our newspaper”. Another press journalist admitted that newspapers very “rarely” republished news from other media outlets, while they also saw the agency copies as a stimulus to conduct their investigative journalism.
On the other hand, radio journalists described a mixed image with regard to the sources used and the balance kept between the news that come from agencies and public relations companies and the news that derive from their own reports. “Nowadays the ratio is 60/40. In effect, 60 per cent from agencies and 40 per cent from primary news”, argued an interviewee.
The issue of collaboration between Greek radio stations and local or international media is similar to the press, with the main collaboration being established with the National Athens and Macedonian News Agency and additional ones with international media, such as the BBC, or international news agencies, such as Reuters. “We have a collaboration with the BBC, we re-transmit its programme, but we do not have the possibility of sending our people in London to observe the logic and the process there”, said an interviewed editor-in-chief.
Television journalists said they also relied upon similar sources like their press and radio counterparts, and they concur that up to 30 per cent of the news they broadcast come from news reported from news agencies, with the exception of the national public service broadcaster, Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT). A journalist described the main agencies that Greek television stations collaborate with and how much they depend on them: “To a large degree the news comes out from the news agencies Associated Press, APTN, Reuters. They are the main sources we use. News comes out from press releases and approximately 70 per cent comes from primary reporting”.
However, another interviewee argued that there was less dependence on these sources: “I need to underline that our outlet does not depend exclusively on the content of the international agencies and on foreign websites. We have a large network of correspondents throughout the country as well as overseas”.
The latter also echoed the important role played by the funds and resources in the capacity of the media to have a multitude of sources and depend less on news agencies and public relations copy. The testimony of another interviewee pointed to the negative impact that the crisis had on the resources available to Greek television stations and how it had led to a form of syndication among television journalists in order to be able to have all the news occurring in a day:
There is an informal collaboration among all TV channels. After the financial crisis that had impacted the media, that’s how we have the capacity to be present on many topics at the same time. There are many times that we might have coordination with another TV channel. For example, I would cover for a particular trial for someone, but request that person to go to another rally and cover that for me. That’s the informal collaboration we rely upon.
Finally, Greek news websites seem to be mainly dependent on “copy–paste journalism”, reproducing news as they are reported by news agencies and other media houses, having very little time to do anything more due to time pressure. One interviewed journalist compared working for a news website with other media and how dependent they were on news agencies:
We rely on agencies very often, a lot more often than in other media organisations. It is because of the flow of the website. You need to do it quickly. You are chasing after the current news, and everything that happens you need to be faster especially from the other news websites, so at a rate of 90 per cent I would say that it comes from there [news agencies].
In conclusion, it appears that, to different degrees, the Greek media has uniform sources and Greek journalists have the capacity to independently conduct an inquiry. Press journalists reported the most freedom to do so, and news website journalists the least. The national news agency is dominant, and there are a number of international news agencies also relevant in the Greek media landscape. Public relations announcements had less of an impact, according to testimonies by the journalists. But the financial crisis has had an impact, with content syndication being applied to television journalists, at least. Finally, despite the journalists not explicitly mentioning the impact of politics on their source selections, recent research on the Greek press (Kostopoulos, 2020) reveals that politics is still the most important determinant of source selection and information management.
