The reason is simple.Mainstream, traditional media are owned by a few, mainly businessmen who have been too close to the state and governments through a history of lucrative contracts and whose credit debt has multiplied under the current situation. The discourse of ‘austerity’ has been useful to this ownership structure because it places the responsibility- and weight of bailout – on the backs of citizens. The new media, however, assisted by their connection to social media platforms managed to speak to and connect withcitizens/users and so tapped into a different form of language, as well as perspective. The ‘truth’ reported by digital media grew and expanded through a perspective and discourse that is more human-centric, and less market-centric, spoke of society and its needs and advocated for the protection of public assets as well as information in the spiritprovided by the constitution of the country.

The independent digital community andcitizen journalism has been continuouslyprovidingaudiences in Greece -and beyond- with unconventional and pluralistic opinions. To that came the -unintentionally- pirateprogramme of the recently shut-down Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) that continued broadcasting against the Greek government’s decision to impose what became known as ‘the black’ (colour on television sets screens).ERT quickly became internationally known as #ERT. It also quickly came under the control of its employees, intellectuals and journalists and caused political creaks and social recovery ‘spasms’.

Since its shut-down, ERT media professionalsconduct open and uncensored discussions upon the true and fair side of the crisis story and the ERTstory, as well as other stories of great importance to the Greek society, such as the privatization of water and the sell-out of public wealth.Theybroadcast “unprocessed” information and freed from political intervention can questionsupposed‘inevitabilities’in the management of the crisis.To claim that freedom of expression is re-born through the web would not be an exaggeration.Millions of citizens within and beyond the borders of Greece, including a vast number of disillusionedor disaffected citizenswho avoided getting involved inpublic affairs, and whose number issimilar to ‘lost’ audiences of the private news organizations, tuned in.

HERE IMAGE OF ERT LAST BROADCAST

The last broadcast: on the left, the State press representativeSimosKedikoglou announcing the shut-down of ERT on 11 June 2013. On the right hand-side the black screens in place of the ERT broadcast signal. Below, cameras in ERT studios as broadcasts continue nonstop.

The European Broadcasting Union’s (EBU) decision to support the endeavour of self-managed ERT has been of immensesignificance in this. Subsequently, a unique Intranet was created to support ERT through thousands of sites and blogs which maintained ERT’s TV and radio frequencies and, at the time of going to press, still keep on broadcasting its programmesby placing ERT(software) player on their sites.Throughgoogle docs alist of the sites that broadcast ERT’s TV and radio live stream programme is constantly being renewed even at the time of writing. It is estimated that a total of 4.5 million connections to ERT’s live stream were made from the evening of 11 to 22 June 2013. The EBU(ebu.ch 2013, http://www3.ebu.ch/cms/en/sites/ebu/contents/news/2013/06/monitor-ert-online.html) stated about2.7 millions of connections through its own website, while “The press Project”(ThePressProject.gr 2013, http://www.thepressproject.gr/popuplayer.php) one of the main sites broadcasting ERT’s live stream, cites 1,820,000 people (2,416,000 in one month) from 77 countries, who chose to watch ERT, ERT3 and ERA’s radio programmes. About half a million viewers, which is the highest number of ratings achieved by the News channel of ERT NET, plus the 1.5 million viewers who were tuned into NET as their news source during last year’s elections summed up to more than 1,8 million viewers and users after the ‘black’ on the screen.

It is perhaps ironic that whilecitizens are ‘returning’ to ERT through digital communities, the government’s decision to shut down ERT is based on its wish to exclude the public broadcaster form a digital future. The political economic motives behind the ERT closure are not what misleadingly was claimed to be economic efficiency, since ERT was a profitable and self-sustained public organization, with revenue of Euro 350 million in 2010,of which EURO 34 million profit; in 2011 ERT’s revenue was EURO 329 million, of which EURO 57 million profit. On3 June 2013 ERT employed 2,907 employees and cost just over EURO 4 per household per month.Instead, the aim wasto reduce the public sector and marginalise it,as a provision favourable to private media owners for the forthcoming digital television and network spectrum and its management. The consultation procedure ondigital television and network providers concludedon 19 June 2013, a mere week after the ERT shutdown.Withan abolished ERT, no public broadcaster was in place to respond to the Public Consultation of draft legislation,which was to be held on 30 June 2013.

Nikos Michalitsisnow former, head of ERT’s technical services, denounced the fact that private news media technicians accompanied the police forces who broke into ERT’s transmitters and switched them off(ertOpen.com 2013,http://www.ertopen.com/news-in-4-languges/english/item/726-the-role-of-commercial-channels-in-the-closure-of-ert#.Ud5-yW37Yno).

After that, they provided assistance for the transmission of a digital signal of bars with the contribution of the Greek (private) digital network provider “Digea Digital Provider Inc.”(digea.gr2013)and the Hellenic telecommunications provider “OTE S.A.”(ote.gr2013).Digea’s main activity is to provide networking and multiplexing, as well as network broadcasting both for the aforementioned shareholders, and for any other legitimate TV station wishing to use its services. It is a joint venture of six large private TV stations. It is worth mentioning that these stations keep broadcasting until today without being officially and legally licensed (see also Psychogiopoulou and Kandyla, in this issue of MCP). Thus, the absence of ERT from the auction for the provision of digital television frequencies acted openly for the benefit of private interests.

Recently, the government acted in unlawful manner to set on-air the new broadcaster: it used private facilitiesto transmita broadcasting signal with the title ΕDΤ (Hellenic Public TV), replacing ERT without proper authorisation from public licensing authorities, just like the private TV channels have operated illegally for the past 20 years (According to law, since 2010, for any and every item of public spending and public contract to be valid and realisable, the relevant decision must first be published on the internet as a matter of transparency, on diavgeia.gr. This did not take place as a matter of contract between the Greek state and private persons owning the studios in Paeania in Attica, where the EDT was hosted. Moreover, EDT broadcast without licence by the Greek National Council for Radio and Television NCRTV (esr.gr 2013). Just before this piece was going to press, a special studio was set up for EDT in a state building, the General Secretariat for Infromation after increased pressured by the EBU).

What is more, a film was broadcast without licence, whose producer, RovirosManthoulisand owner of the copyrighthas already taken legal action (lifo.gr 2013,http://www.lifo.gr/now/culture/30480).

It has been announced that through this channel, the government intends to broadcast programmes from the ERT archive, as well use the state Athens-Macedonia News Agency (amna.gr 2013) as the source for news programmes. The AMNA was wholly funded by the ERT licence fee. It is unclear how the only national news agency will be funded in the future and unclear what this means for the role and position of journalism in the new channel.

The case of the ERT shutdown has a lot to show. The ‘black’ on the screen has awoken the largest part of society although – or precisely because – the colour black is quite familiar to Greek history – it depicts a sense of frustration. (Opinion poll by GPO for ESEE, carried out in January 2013, long before the decisions made during the last negotiations with the Troika).

Nevertheless, even after the recent cabinet reshuffling, as a result of the withdrawal of the party of DEMAR from the three-partner coalition government, the vast majority of Greeks (73 per cent) thinks the country is moving towards the wrong direction. The findings of the VPRCopinion poll (vprc.gr 2013, http://www.vprc.gr/uplds/File/teleytaia nea/tvxs/Political Conjuncture and Governance Jul2013.pdf) for “tvxs.gr”(tvxs.gr 2013) show that 58 per cent of the respondents findthe decision made for ERT’s shutdown a mistake.

It is interesting to note the opinions of political parties voters regarding the decision to shut down ERT. Just over half of New Democracy (ND)voters (55%)state that the decision wastowards the right direction, yet,a third(33 per cent) of ND voters disagree with the decision. PASOK voters appear equally divided (42 per cent agree and 42 per cent disagree), while DEMAR votersexpresstheiropposition with64 per cent.Of all respondents, 20 per cent state that they have watched ERT live stream on internet.

This same disagreement to the ERT shut-down is also endorsed by 8 out of 10 voters of SYRIZA, the main opposition party in Greece after the 2012 elections. It is worth mentioning that 62 per cent of government critics in terms of shutting down ERT are women and 55 per cent are men. As far as respondents’ ages are concerned, ages ranging from 18-54 appear to support ERT at 66 per cent, as well as in older ages the number of respondents who criticize the government’s decision is around 50 per cent. Moreover, onaverage, 60 per cent of Greek citizens consider the shutdown of the state broadcaster a mistake, irrespective of their educational status. Even among vocational categories, unemployed, wage-earners in the private sector, university students and self-employed appears to be consensus in support of ERT. Finally, using as a criterion the geographical distribution of survey participants, agreement with the government’s decision, prevails only in two out of the thirteen administrative regions of the country. This shows the importance of PSB in reaching all regions in Greece and all homes.This was one of the most important functions of ERT.

The case of ERT offers several useful conclusions. Social media might have been the first and probably the wisest choice made by journalists, who watched themselves being excluded from content distribution concerning their reactions to the government’s decision to shut down ERT transmitters. Nevertheless, social media could not have replaced traditional media structures, one reason being that people are not fully conversant with the new media. ERT journalists have certainly made a favourable impression on Greek society via Facebook and Twitter, however, this brings neither engagement nor loyalty by the public, necessarily, nor by journalists themselves. It has become apparent that without a back-office and a specific established context the digital community could not perform as efficiently as it did or as it could possibly perform. This has been manifest in the case of ERT journalists who had to be able to express a cohesive and documented opinion on ERT restructuring.

Contributor details

VasilisVasilopoulos is a journalist and former head of digital news ERT(ert.gr 2013) and deputy director of multimedia department of Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation. He is a research fellow at the MA in Quality Journalism and New Technologies of the DonauUniversitätKrems, Austria and the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.