A simmering feud between the leftist Greek government and television broadcasters again heated up on Friday, with a government spokeswoman accusing the private television station managements of ignoring a EuroMed summit held in Athens the same day, and instead showing “repeats and cooking shows.”
Relations reached a nadir earlier this month after only two out of seven current major television stations grabbed one of only four licenses for nationwide broadcast licenses. Broadcasters and the opposition have sharply accused the government of intentionally setting the number of nationwide licenses at four and then proceeding with a closed-door electronic auction over nearly three days, which saw total winning bids for the four licenses reach a stratospheric, by Greek market standards, 246 million euros.
Spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili charged that the private TV stations did not interrupt their normal programming because the images from the EuroMed summit “were not compatible with their disaster-mongering view”.
She said the impact of the summit outside of Greece was “quite influential”, pointing out the fact that 226 accredited reporters and television crew-members were on hand in Athens for the event, including 145 from foreign mass media.
