Media frenzy
Where is the scourge of the terror-obsessed media, particularly of television, headed? One cannot help being overtaken by political dizziness and inexpressible nausea as we have reached a point where a terrorist like Savvas Xeros – who has already confessed to having committed dozens of crimes that should classify him as a criminal of the underworld rather as a psychopathic political criminal – is allowed to speak to television channels from inside Korydallos prison portraying himself as a «revolutionary ideologue» or victim of «drug-based treatment» in an attempt to make up for his prior image as a gutless informer on his former associates. Should things continue this way, Xeros will soon host his own show. So far, we have witnessed the precipitous degeneration of television programs into an indescribable mishmash of journalist folly, of pseudo-prosecutorial malice and social trivialization. The dens of journalistic iniquity immediately rocketed into the spotlight as shapers of public opinion. Figures with obscure contacts and dark objectives paraded on television shows, plunging the country into the mire of their underworld. At first, many – including the government, or at least some circles inside it – were benefited by this general degradation and tolerated journalists’ charlatanism and mud-slinging as they believed that, in the final analysis, it facilitated the prevalence of the official viewpoint on events. But now they have realized that the cannibalistic frenzy of this obsession with terror has begun to nibble at the institutional foundations of our democratic society. The awakening is rude. The doctors’ scientific reassurances, the persistent and legally substantiated work of the prosecution, the painstaking and prolonged work of the police are all instantaneously rebuffed and uncritically questioned by Xeros’s myth-making. And it is the media which has enabled him to spread his myths by providing him with a prominent podium. Do the media possess any sense of social responsibility or not? Xeros is a criminal and he has every reason to try to deny his guilt or to absolve himself in the eyes of his associates. Should the media become vehicles of his propaganda in the name of higher ratings? We’ve had enough.
