September 7th, 2009



Elections in Greece: Newspaper tragedy

The prime minister Mr Karamanlis declared elections in Greece nearly 2 years before the end of the 4year normal period. I am not to comment or debate on the reason that pushed him to do it earlier.

I am going to comment on newspapers. What I have seen already is an immediate turn to wards the political party each publisher supports. The masks are down and it is so obvious that every newspaper publisher in Greece has his own agenda in mind and not the reader.

 

We have newspapers that started to circulate again after months just to get the government advertising. And of course the publisher will fire all the people again after the elections. And no one says or does nothing about that.

 

We have newspapers that act as an everyday advertisement of the political party they support. The idea of journalism simply does not exit. It is so funny to see all this frontpages every day. Today I laughed at Eleftherotypia's headline that quoted the pre election campain of PASOK's leader George Papandreou catch frase like that:

 

"George Papandreou: This is the government I am planing"

 

 

And of course we have design. No we don't. There isn't any.

 

It seems like every time we have elections something happens to the planet and newspapers become word documents with cliparts attached as mugshots of politicians.


He who gives me the best explanation on why this happens, gets a years subscription to all those newspapers/political-voices I am talking about.

 

I remember fighting when I was working on ET during the elections of 2007 with the editor exactly about the same thing.

Design would alter what his headline would say.

That is what I was told!!!

He preferred to "sell out" his name as a Director in Chief to serve the agenda of his publisher writing exactly what he was told rather than trying to find the best way to tell the same thing without being soooooo obvious. Yet we managed to have some very good front pages during that period given the circumstances.

 

I will be watching everyday and I will post my results when this fair ends on October 4th.

 

 



categories: ,
tags: editorial design, greek elections, eleftherotypia, george papandreou, 0

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