Euro Crisis & Network Cooperation: Greek case-study – Nikos Lampropoulos, Founder EurActiv Greece
April 21, 2016
During the multidimensional crisis on a political and economic level, EurActiv Greece’s main objective was to provide a balanced reporting, by closely cooperating and exchanging views with other national sections, especially from Germany and Brussels-based EurActiv.com.
The euro crisis and a possible Grexit caused a high level confusion to Greek readers.
Various reports in the EU and national press provided different information on the issue (sometimes misleading) and as a result, many readers started suspiciously seeing the reports of the foreign press.
EurActiv’s model granted a great opportunity to take advantage of a whole network and provide specific and reliable information.
German cooperation
EurActiv Greece was in close contact with EurActiv in Berlin exchanging views and content regarding the crisis, as the relations between Greece and Germany reached a record low.
The biased approach of the national media resulted in an unjustifiable serious crisis between the two societies, with sometimes hate speech dominating in the headlines.
Our goal was to get over this prejudice and the political games of specific cycles, and try to cooperate with our EurActiv colleagues across Europe.
Sometimes, some joint articles were written.
French cooperation
The same happened with EurActiv France, as Paris played a crucial role during the negotiations:
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/euro-finance/french-industry-push-investment-shock-athens-318111
The outcome of this cooperation was that when Greek readers were seeing an article jointly written by EurActiv Greece and Germany, they felt more confident about its content and the information provided.
Brussels cooperation
Responding to EurActiv’s value of objective and reliable reporting, EurActiv Greece was constantly consulting with the editorial team in Brussels.
EA.com journalists were in direct contact with EU officials close to the bailout negotiations, and as a result, they were providing EurActiv Greece with the feedback they were getting.
In Athens, we tried to filter the news coming from government officials as well as the reports of the Greek press.
Before we wrote an article, we always verified the information we had with our colleagues in Brussels.
It was a challenging task, as we tried to keep a balanced reporting and simultaneously, provide Greek readers with reliable and trustful information.
Plenty of EurActiv Greece’s articles went viral in the Greek press. Surprisingly, the crisis helped EurActiv Greece to enhance its reputation and at the same time, ensure its presence in the EU media “closed circle” of Greece.
Almost all of our predictions, based on the close cooperation with our EurActiv colleagues, were at the end confirmed, something that was widely recognized by Greek readers.
Dispassionate reporting on Grexit
A characteristic example of EurActiv Greece’s dispassionate reporting on Grexit was the “Katainen’s” case.
While the Greek media was reporting that the Commission would not cooperate with a leftist government and that a Grexit was approaching, EurActiv Greece tried to keep its distance from these scenarios and see the actual facts.
We didn’t try to show the “bright side of the things” but on the contrary, present the facts, host the opinions of all stakeholders, and let the reader make independent judgment of the reality.
Just before the general elections in Greece, Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen told EurActiv Greece in Strasbourg that the EU executive “will respect democracy and is ready to cooperate with any government in Greece”.
This article not only made EurActiv Greece quite famous in Greece, but at the same time it changed the content of the political debate in Athens.
It was breaking news in Greek mainstream TV media as well as a headline in the mainstream newspapers and news websites.
Regarding the big issues of the Greek political/economic scene, what we managed to achieve is people saying “let’s see what EurActiv says on the issue”, which is quite crucial for our ultimate goal to build up trust with our readers.
Our intention is to further develop our cooperation with the national sections of EurActiv across Europe.
We believe it’s the only way to respond to the mid-term challenge of EU readers: To find reliable sources of information in a fragile EU media scene.
Nikos Lampropoulos
Founder EurActiv.gr
Author : EurActiv: Pioneering Values in European Media
