Greece, of course, is a land which cherishes free expression but which sometimes takes liberties in this direction to irrational extremes. More than a thousand radio stations and 150 television channels operate, and since the great concentration of radio transmission stations are perched on the crags above Athens, Mount Hymettus has come to look like a giant pin-cushion.
Last month police were sent up there to inspect transmitters and somehow a fistfight developed between patrolmen and radio officials of SKY, an especially popular station. In the ruckus, Yiannis Alafouzos was arrested, owner of SKY which, it happens, is often critical of the Prime Minister.
“No one is above the law,” said Premier Mitsotakis when he heard of this incident. He says this quite often, and of course, no responsible citizen can disagree with him, can (s)he? The interesting thing is that all private radio stations, apart from a handful which received temporary licences in 1988 now expired, are totally illegal. It seems that if nobody can be above the law, at least everyone can be against it.
Survival of the fittest is the law which no one is above in this wild mountainous region of media brigands. Radio engineers pull down rival antennae, vandalize equipment, and steal each others air frequencies. A responsible citizen in Aigaleo who is placidly listening to, say, Michael Jackson or George Dalaras, may find him(her)self suddenly plugged into a Leninist diatribe by Aleka Papariga.
It cannot be concealed that this posse to the mountaintop to establish the Law of the Covenant had a political
dimension. Mr Alafouzos, whose father is in shipping, has lately entered the Greek media world with an aplomb which has earned him comparison with Rupert Murdoch. Several years ago he acquired the distinguished morning daily Kathimerini from banker George Koskotas, a figure who has lately dominated the domestic political scene and is currently serving a short sentence for forgery. Though his media organs are conservative, Mr Alafouzos seems to hold the Prime Minister in contempt.
SKY is hugely popular. Partly, this is due to a program of personally slanted political satire whose jokes are raunchy, whose material is neither edifying nor surprising, whose invective hovers on the libellous and whose taste is uniformly low. At best, its barnyard scenario sometimes sounds like a sub-Orwellian Animal Farm, its cast drawn mainly from the Prime Minister and his family.
Mr Alafouzos and five of his employees face charges of resisting the authorities and “violating forestry regulations.” SKY personnel are charged with trying to complete a TV antenna station at the top of the mountain.
Minister to the Prime Minister Sotiris Kouvelas has pointed out that there are laws governing media which must be followed. This law states that no one can own more than one radio station or more than 25 percent of a TV channel. Mr Kouvelas claims that Mr Alafouzos and his family own three radio stations, control two more, and have shares in Mega TV.
“We did not abolish the State monopoly,” he said, “just to allow private monopolies to be formed.”
Critics as powerful as former government ministers Miltiades Evert and Stavros Dimas, however, have objected that blowing up this issue is damaging the government’s image.
The huge backlog of TV and radio licence applications have been ignored and broadcasting guidelines have not been enforced or amplified since the media were freed from State monopoly two years ago.
Mr Kouvelas has been especially criticized for his narrow legalism since it was he, as ND mayor of Thessaloniki in the last years of socialist rule, who made a great name for himself by personally supervising the erection of a municipal radio station in violation of monopoly law.
“The well-known radio station is a blemish on our public life,” said a New Democracy statement. “It uses vulgar and abusive language against the Prime Minister…” which, of course, is what Mr Mitsotakis (and Mrs and daughter Dora) had been complaining about.
This was, however, far away from those “forestry violations” and Mount Hymettus ecological disturbances that were the beginning of the quarrel.
By this time, all these interparty losses of temper were playing into the hands of the opposition which they could hardly resist. Caring nothing whatever about Mr Alafouzos, spokesmen for PASOK and the United Left remarked that the government’s pursuit of him ”is an effort to control the mass media,” and SKY picking up that message could hardly fail to say that “someone is tampering with our transmission in a systematic and suspicious manner.”
This finally goaded the government into dragging up the heavy artillery in the shape of its Bionic Man, Mr John Palaiokrassas, the formidable Minister of Finance. His X-ray eyes can see through anyone’s tax return and every evasion is as clear as day to him. As a result of his inquiries, a report has been filed with the authorities in Piraeus alleging grand-scale ledger book juggling by the Alafouzos-owned petroleum import companies.
The path leading from the summit of Mount Hymettus to the public prosecutor’s office in Piraeus is a long and tortuous one, but there have been many interesting sights along the way.
