Greece
The Greek media market is characterised by digital brand fragmentation, high use of social media for news, and one of the lowest levels of trust in news among the 48 markets surveyed.
Last year further consolidation took place in Greek news media. The conglomerate of Evangelos Marinakis, who owns some of the largest legacy print and TV news organisations in Greece (e.g. Mega TV News, Ta Nea, To Vima), bought the NewsΙt group, which comprises several digital-born outlets, including the successful news website Newsit.gr (19% weekly reach this year). In addition, Dimitris Melissanidis, a shipping and oil businessman who owns the business newspaper Naftemporiki and Naftemporiki TV, bought the left-wing newspaper Efimerida ton Sintakton (EfSyn). EfSyn was formed in 2012 as a co-operative by former workers of the Eleftherotypia newspaper but had recently faced financial difficulties. Finally, the three businessmen Dimitrios Mpakos, Ioannis Kaymenakis, and Alexandros Exarchos acquired the digital-born outlet iefimerida (16% reach), adding it to their expanding news media portfolio, which also includes the Athens-based regional broadcaster Action24.1 Greek audiences consistently report high concerns about undue influence on news from powerful businesspeople and politicians (Kalogeropoulos et al. 2021).
In TV, the financial results of major broadcasters reveal continuing economic pressures. Only two of the seven national broadcasters reported profits in their 2024 results (Mega TV and Antenna).2 Mega TV further expanded in 2025, with a 24-hour news channel available online and through pay-TV packages, strengthening its position in the competitive television news market. The Antenna Group expanded into Italy this year by acquiring the Italian Gedi Group, which owns La Repubblica. Other broadcasters continue to face financial challenges. Star and Alpha reported smaller losses compared to 2023, while Skai recorded losses of around €7m, prompting changes in the company’s management board and raising questions about its long-term strategy. Finally, the owners of Mega TV, the Antenna Group, and the broadcasters Star and Alpha announced a new joint streaming platform to counter the competition from foreign and domestic streaming services, which have been affecting the ratings of Greek broadcasters. Generally, recurrent losses in the media sector suggest that many news outlets are owned more for their political or business influence than their profitability.
On the AI front, a new code of ethics from the Journalists’ Union of Athens Daily Newspapers (ESIEA) emphasises transparency about when AI is used, rigorous verification of AI-generated material, safeguarding sources and personal data, and respecting intellectual property rights. Despite these principles, disclosure of AI involvement in Greek journalism remains the exception, and there have already been instances where unverified or erroneous AI-generated content has made its way into published stories.
At the same time, Proto Thema, a large newspaper and third by weekly use in our online brand list, receives around 250,000 website comments each month and uses an AI system to moderate 80–90% of user comments.3 On the users’ side, the use of AI chatbots for news consumption among Greeks has risen to 12%, double the level recorded the previous year.
Several incidents during the year also raised concerns about the safety of journalists and the broader climate for press freedom. A bomb was placed outside the home of Giannis Pretenteris, the Mega TV commentator and publisher of the newspaper To Vima. Τhe local news publisher and journalist Dimitris Kareklidis of magnesianews.gr was beaten up by hooded attackers in the city of Volos. In another incident, MEP Nikos Pappas assaulted journalist Nikos Giannopoulos in Strasbourg, leading to his expulsion from Syriza. Investigative journalists Thanassis Koukakis and Eliza Triantafyllou, who were working on a report about bank takeovers, were targeted by anonymous online publications attempting to damage their reputation before the stories were published. In addition, the government spokesperson publicly warned journalist Christos Avramidis during a press briefing that his questions about a deadly migrant shipwreck could be punishable by law, a statement that drew widespread criticism.
There were further developments in the Predator spyware scandal. A Greek court found four people guilty for using the surveillance software Predator to target 87 individuals, including politicians, military officials, and journalists. The scandal was first uncovered in April 2022 by investigative journalists Eliza Triantafyllou and Tassos Telloglou at the outlet Inside Story. Their reporting revealed how the spyware had been used to monitor a wide range of public figures. The case illustrates the resilience and continuing importance of investigative reporting in uncovering major political scandals despite the structural challenges confronting the Greek media system.
Antonis Kalogeropoulos
Associate Professor,Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium
In the online survey we ask respondents which news brands they have used to access news in the last week. These figures are based on respondents’ recall of the news sources they have used, and should be understood as survey-based measures of weekly brand reach for news.
They are not the same as web analytics, audience ratings, or other audience measurement systems (such as BARB for television in the UK). Those approaches use different methods and may measure different things. Our figures are based on what respondents tell us in an online survey about which brands they have used for news in the past week.
It is also important to note that we ask specifically about use for news. Some multi-genre broadcasters, newspapers, or other providers offer content beyond news, and the figures in our report should not be interpreted as measuring the overall audience reach for these media organisations. They refer only to respondents who say they used that brand to access news.
How do you ask about offline and online news reach?
We ask about offline and online reach separately. First, we ask respondents which brands they have used to access news offline in the last week, via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. Then we ask which brands they have used to access news online in the last week, via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of internet access.
The questions as asked in the survey are:
Which of the following brands have you used to access news offline in the last week (via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media)? Please select all that apply.
Which of the following brands have you used to access news online in the last week (via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of Internet access)? Please select all that apply.
Respondents can select more than one brand in each question. For that reason, the figures do not add up to 100%. They show the proportion of respondents who say they used each brand for news in the last week.
How do you present the weekly news reach data in the report?
On each country or market page, we present the most widely used brands in two charts: one for offline news reach and one for online news reach. The offline chart covers use via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. The online chart covers use via websites, apps, social media, and other internet-based forms of access.
The figures shown are weekly news reach: the percentage of respondents who say they used that brand for news at least once in the last week.
These figures are useful for comparing the relative news reach of different brands within each market, and for understanding how news use is distributed across offline and online sources. However, they should not be treated as market shares or measures of total time spent with a brand.
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
The brand selection is a strategic sample and not a comprehensive list of all news providers in each market. We consult with country or market experts, review prior years’ Digital News Report data, and draw on other data sources to identify the most widely used brands for news across traditional and online channels.
In some cases, where a news provider operates a number of related news brands, we aggregate these under a single heading. For example, in the UK, reach for the BBC may include use of several BBC news services across different platforms. This is done to give a clearer sense of the overall reach of major news providers, but it means that figures may not always refer to a single programme, website, app, newspaper, or channel.
Because of survey length limitations, we can only ask about a limited number of brands in each market. The charts should not be treated as exhaustive lists of every brand used for news in that market. Due to space limitations, reach charts show up to 16 of the most used brands, though we ask about more in each survey.
How should the offline and online figures be interpreted?
A respondent may use the same brand both offline and online, and may also use several different brands in the same week. For this reason, the offline and online figures should not be added together to calculate a total audience. They are best read as separate indicators of how far particular brands reach people through different forms of access.
As with other survey-based findings, small differences should be interpreted with caution. We are careful not to claim that one brand reaches more people than another, or that a brand’s reach has changed, unless the differences are large enough to be meaningful. Any year on year change of 2 percentage points or lower is not considered statistically significant.
Methodology note
We introduced education quotas in 2023 to make data more representative of national populations. Part of the declines in reach in the source chart between 2022 and 2023 will be because there are more people with lower levels of education in our sample, who typically have lower interest in news.
Pay for online news
8%
(+1)
Avoid the news sometimes/often
60%
(-)
Trust in news overall
18%
(-4)
Global average: 37%
Trust in news in Greece fell by a further 4pp this year, reaching an 11-year low of 18%. Trust in political institutions and the media is closely linked, and both are currently at very low levels. Greeks overwhelmingly believe that the country’s media are subject to undue political and business influence. Local and regional news are most trusted.
We ask each respondent to rate a number of popular brands (usually 15 in each country) according to how trustworthy they think each brand’s news output is. We do this on a 0-10 scale, where a score of 0 means that the respondent does not see the brand as trustworthy at all and 10 means that they see the brand as completely trustworthy – with 5 meaning ‘neither trustworthy or untrustworthy’. There is an option for those who have not heard of any particular brand to ensure that scores are based only on responses from people who are familiar with each brand.
When we come to report these scores, we add up the proportion of respondents that give a score between 6-10 and mark this as ‘trust’. We also add up the proportion that give a brand a score between 0-4 and mark this as ‘don’t trust’.
The question as asked in the survey is…
How trustworthy would you say news from the following brands is? Please use the scale below, where 0 is ‘not at all trustworthy’ and 10 is ‘completely trustworthy’.
As we make explicit throughout the report, including next to tables presenting brand-level trust findings, whether respondents consider a brand trustworthy or not is their subjective judgement. The percentage figures shown are aggregates of people’s personal opinions, they are not an objective assessment of underlying trustworthiness. We leave it to each respondent to form an opinion on whether they trust someone or something, and we field the question because we consider the resulting data to be important.
How do you present the trust data in the report?
We present the data in an alphabetised table. In the past, we presented this data as a stacked bar chart, but this led some to treat the chart as a list of the most and least trusted news brands in a given market, despite our explicit explanation this was not what the tables showed.
We present the data in a way that avoids giving small differences the appearance of great importance. In cases where there is around two percentage points difference or less between the brands, we cannot say for sure that one brand is more trusted than another. We are careful not to try to claim that one brand is more trusted than another or that trust scores have changed unless those changes are statistically significant.
Due to survey length limitations, it is important to note that we only ask about 15 of the most widely used brands. It is very likely that there are brands with lower (and higher) trust scores that we do not ask about. For that reason, we cannot say that any brand is the least (or most) trusted overall. Next to each chart we are careful to say: “Only the below brands were included in the survey. It should not be treated as a list of the most or least trusted brands as it is not exhaustive.”
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
We consult with country or market experts, draw on prior years’ Digital News Report data and other data sources to determine the most widely used brands (across traditional and online channels) when it comes to news. We also try to include ‘local newspapers’ or ‘local television’ as catch-all titles as we recognise their impact is considerable in most markets.
How representative is this 48-market survey?
The Digital News Report survey is based on an online poll but the methodology selects participants to be as representative of national populations as possible. Samples are assembled using representative quotas for age, gender, and region in every market and data is weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data. The full methodology can be found here.
How do you try to contextualise the findings to ensure that trust scores are not taken out of context or misinterpreted?
Trust is one of a number of measures we track, including consumption of different sources, device usage, social media use, and much more. We aim to maintain consistency in our measurements year-on-year so that ratings of trust, levels of news consumption, and more, can be contextualised.
Country data is accompanied by an 800-word commentary from a media expert that aims to set the data in a wider context. We write a short commentary on the trust scores where appropriate, noting any statistically relevant changes.
RSF World Press Freedom Index
86/180
Score 55.05
Measure of press freedom from NGO Reporters Without Borders based on expert assessment. More at rsf.org
Footnotes
1 See the investigative project Whoownsthemedia.gr by Solomon for a guide to the business interests of media owners.
2 https://typologies.gr/zimiogonoi-oi-5-apo-toys-7-stathmoys-ethnikis-emveleias-to-2024-piezei-asfyktika-ta-kanalia-o-athemitos-antagonismos-ton-streaming-ypiresion/
3 https://mediacopilot.ai/proto-thema-utopia-analytics-ai-comment-moderation/