Taming the monster
Whatever objections there may be to the legal and technical «details» likely to undermine the effectiveness of the new media ownership law and even make it incompatible with European law, most citizens believe that something should finally be done about corruption in the relationships between political and business chiefs. It is a problem that has been discussed to such an extent over the past few years without any concrete action being taken to solve it that, as a result, people had begun to believe that the «monster» had gotten out of control and that nothing could be done to rein it in. The funny thing is that the public had been aware of the identities of the so-called «pimps» of the business world well before Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis referred to them as such during a dinner with his aides. There was no doubt in peoples’ minds of the methods being used to clinch valuable state contracts. It is well known that media owners generally regard their organizations not chiefly as a business activity but as a tool for influencing politicians and thus securing other more lucrative activities… So it was inevitable that this problem, which had burgeoned so quickly due to political «tolerance» and the greed of certain businessmen, would be targeted sooner or later by a government fearing its own destruction, if nothing else…
