The Media’s Portrayal of Greek Protests
The Media’s Portrayal of Greek Protests As many people know, Greece is currently in a large sum of debt. Theres no jobs, low income, high taxes, and more pay cuts every day. Families are being forced out of their homes, people are starving on the street, and it seems like no one is doing anything to help. These conditions are pushing the Greek citizens to the edge, and forcing them to stand up for themselves. The Greek people are on the brink of being forced into new slavery. They are working for such little pay, just to survive. This is a prime example of the dominant group, being the wealthy, having the power to control others against their will. The media tends to portray the citizens who are protesting as the criminals, because the media is mainly controlled by government. If someone has ever heard the saying “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” then they would understand why the media puts the blame on the protesters. The media puts false concepts into peoples heads, and makes them believe they are real. Greek citizens are being forced into poverty and are given only one alternative, to fight back. An online article states this very well, “From the beginning of 2010 Greece has been in the throes of a severe financial and economic crisis – without doubt, the worst in living memory” (Matsaganis, Leventi, Monastiriotis & Christodoulakis, 2011). The economic crisis was very sudden for Greece because of miscalculations and misreported information. “After a decade of fast growth, the underlying weakness of the Greek economy was made evident in October 2009, when the incoming government announced that earlier fiscal data had been misreported. The fiscal deficit and public debt estimates for 2009 were radically revised” (Matsaganis, Leventi, Monastiriotis & Christodoulakis, 2011). Basically this quote is saying that the nation was in a huge amount of debt, but due to miscalculations they did not know it. The government of Greece has been trying to fix their
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Matsaganis, M., Leventi, C., Monastiriotis, V., & Christodoulakis, N. (2011, July). The greek crisis in focus: Austerity, recession and paths to recovery. Retrieved from http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/38380/1/rGeeSE_Special_Issue.pdf
Arestis, P., & Pelagidis, T. (2010, December). Absurd austerity policies in europe. Retrieved from http://mesharpe.metapress.com/media/64t4qptvlm2x076klqfw/contributions/t/5/u/5/t5u547142u752878.pdf
Hartleb, F. (2011, May 27). A new protest culture in western europe?. Retrieved from http://www.springerlink.com/content/6771650505472181/fulltext.pdf