The Greek media market is characterised by digital brand fragmentation, high use of social media for news, and the lowest trust in news among our 48 markets, due to political polarisation and concerns about undue influence from politicians and powerful businessmen.

This year’s survey was conducted during mass demonstrations in Greece marking the second anniversary of the deadly train crash in Tempi in 2023, with widespread demands directed primarily at the government for greater accountability and improved railway safety. Trust in institutions, including the justice system, is near all-time lows, and public criticism has also extended to the news media and their coverage of the incident and its aftermath. Trust in news media has remained very low in Greece throughout the ten years it has been measured by the Digital News Report, and this year was no exception – only 22% of respondents said they trust the news, the joint lowest level among 48 countries.

This year also saw significant declines in brand trust across all news media outlets we measured, including for the public service broadcaster (ERT) (-11 percentage points). During survey fieldwork, there was uproar about the public service broadcaster and its perceived lack of emphasis on the first demonstration in Tempi. The generally pro-government commercial broadcaster SKAI also saw large a decrease in brand trust (-10pp). All outlets, however, saw trust fall.

A Greek court dismissed a lawsuit filed by the former director of the Greek prime minister's office, Grigoris Dimitriadis, against journalists and media outlets for their coverage of the wiretapping scandal in 2022 that led to his resignation. The lawsuit was deemed the SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) of the year at the European Anti-SLAPP Conference in 2022. The Greek court determined that the media reports were neither false nor defamatory and adhered to ethical journalism standards. A second lawsuit asking for €950,000 in damages was mostly rejected by another court, which only accepted that one headline harmed Dimitriadis’s reputation and awarded €3,000 from each defendant.

Podcasts are becoming prominent among Greeks online. After a period during which they were established as a source of entertainment, comedy, and lifestyle content, publishers have begun creating news podcasts. News organisations like To Vima, Kathimerini, and LiFO have developed their own current affairs podcasts. For example To Vima Simera, which provides a daily overview of a topical issue, and LiFO Politics, with in-depth interviews about politics. Overall, 9% of Greeks online now use podcasts for news every week. However, despite these initiatives in news and current affairs podcasts, entertainment and lifestyle-focused ones remain the most successful.

Greece lacks a standardised system to measure website traffic and unique visits to online media. This can make it harder for publishers to compete for advertising revenue against platforms such as Facebook which are able to leverage detailed demographic and user data. Greek digital advertisers' unions – also affected by this issue – are taking initiatives to establish a commonly agreed-upon measure of website traffic.¹

Changes occurred in the left-wing news media ecosystem. Rosa Progressive, a relatively large digital-born news outlet with a significant social media following, was sold to Politis Media Group, which primarily operates in entertainment and advertising. Avgi, a historically left-wing newspaper part-owned by the left-wing party Syriza, closed its daily print edition. Employees of both Avgi and the Syriza-owned news radio station Sto Kokkino demonstrated against being unpaid for several months. These financial difficulties reflect broader struggles within Greece’s left-wing media but also the wider political landscape.

A code of ethics for the use of AI in the newsroom is about to be presented by the Greek Federation of Editors' Unions. Despite some attempts to formally integrate AI in Greek newsrooms (e.g. translation services, the creation of audio articles), its introduction has been proceeding slowly and currently there are no publicly disclosed agreements between Greek publishers and AI companies for content licensing.

Social media continue to be used by most Greeks online to get news (64% overall). YouTube (30%), Instagram (21%), and TikTok (17%) are now increasingly used for news, particularly among younger audiences. Alongside this trend, a growing far-right landscape of YouTuber news influencers has emerged, many of whom have ties to the now-defunct Neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, and spread conspiracy theories. Many of these YouTubers have larger online audiences than major news media organisations. Their videos are sensationalist and often revolve around topics like ultra-conservative Orthodoxy, Turkey, or support of Trump’s and Putin’s policies.²

Antonis Kalogeropoulos
Free University Brussels (VUB)

Methodology note

We introduced education quotas in 2023 to make data more representative of national populations. Part of the declines in reach in the sources chart between 2022 and 2023 will be because there are more people with lower levels of education in our sample now, who typically have lower interest in news.

Greece still has the lowest levels of trust in news across 48 markets (along with Hungary). Trust is low across all groups, but even lower among younger and left-wing respondents. Local and regional news is trusted more than other specific brands surveyed, highlighting the brand weaknesses of both legacy and digital-born outlets.

Footnotes