Despite the fact that management of media organisations, sales departments, and their newsrooms are separated, in effect, there are a number of mechanisms in place that ensure journalists will follow the editorial stance preferred by the ownership. Pressures from the advertising departments are not so accentuated as political ones, since most journalists report that they do not have any knowledge of the advertising workings of their media organisations. Unspoken pressures exist, however, that lead journalists to cases of self-censorship.
When it comes to pressure from the ownership, cases of direct interventions are not reported, and that is an improvement for Greek journalism. However, journalists always have a sense of what the stance of their organisation is, and they adhere to it. For example, one interviewed editor-in-chief noted:
Not at all. Through the corporation they [owners] do not get involved in the news editing. What exists […] is a stance from the owner of the organisation that has to do with how each one manages the audience, and we do not want to cause fear and fear-mongering among people.
Other interviewees reported that media owners not only suggest the framework of reporting, but also the ideological stance that the organisation should adheres to despite a lack of direct interventions:
We do not have any relationship with the board of directors. We have an owner and a CEO who are in charge of the finances. But I want you to know that none of them is involved in the newsroom. Nevertheless, we do have rules and principles. These pertain to liberalism and the code of journalistic conduct. By default, the owner does not intervene. From then on, we have a framework that we work under. We are in favour of an open economy, we have a liberal understanding and within that framework we will hear the member of the Communist Party, the member of Syriza, the right-winger, and the extreme right-winger. We have no dealings with Golden Dawn but everybody else is hosted. We have a pro-European stance and we are in favour of the free market.
Despite a lack of cases of direct interventions by the owners, this did not mean that Greek journalism has become less instrumentalised, as the pressures are now indirect through the managerial class selected by the owners, according to the statements made by an interviewed editor-in-chief:
The ownership has never shown up, as far as I know. But I would say that it goes without saying and nobody has to tell you that you will never have a front-page that is against the ownership of the organisation. Meaning that nobody has to tell you that, it probably works subconsciously.
In some cases, the owners of new media companies in Greece are journalists themselves. This muddies the water of intervention, as they often have a say in how issues are covered, as described in the interviews conducted:
The owners are journalists. So as journalists they have an opinion. That doesn’t mean that they will intervene to change something, but on the grounds that they are journalists, they have an opinion for a piece of news. They don’t force an editor how to write that.
Another interviewee explained how this coordination with the owner of the media organisation ensures that there would not be any necessity to intervene later in the process, giving a similar account:
There is a possibility to coordinate with the owner of the organisation, who happens to be a journalist and in favour of information and that makes things easier. I believe that there are no interventions, due to this coordination. So, some things are solved before […] there is a necessity for intervention, or corrections.
Pressure from the advertising department was considered to be far less important in the Greek case, as the political value of information is more significant in a very small market with very slim margins of profit being made through advertisement and sales (Hallin & Papathanassopoulos, 2002; Kostopoulos, 2020). Most journalists interviewed reported that not only did they not have any direct communication with advertising departments of their organisations but, in most cases, they also did not really know who the main sponsors were.
Finally, the interviews confirmed that the public service broadcaster ERT, even more than the private media, was free from interventions coming from the advertising department, because, as an ERT journalist testified, the advertising revenue of the public service broadcaster is not that significant: “The advertising department has no relationship with the newsroom. There are some advertising agencies that ERT works with and they ask the advertising time for their clients. Beyond that, they have no say in how issues are reported”.
