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Friday, April 8, 2016

Paul Mason warns political journalists: 'You have no real idea what is going on'

Ex-Channel 4 News economics editor tells International Journalism Festival that making a film about Greece gave him new insight into reporters’ knowledge Paul Mason has warned political and economic journalists that most of the time they have no real idea what is going on. Speaking at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Mason said he was now in a position to see both sides of political and economic reporting. “And I think we need to understand that we [journalists] generally know very little about what is really happening.” Getting ready to show #ThisIsACoup doc @journalismfest Come if ur here! pic.twitter.com/Bp2nZ8TpiW You may know that the previous government closed down the state broadcaster. Syriza reopened it, but it only reopened several days before the referendum [on the bailout conditions held in July 2015]. It started to create a momentum for the no campaign, because suddenly people realised what they’d been missing up to now: relatively objective state-funded journalism with good production values. The private media has good production values but its all owned by oligarchs, doesn’t pay any tax, and doesn’t even have a licence to use the frequencies they broadcast on. If Syriza falls, there won’t be a conservative government. It will be replaced by a technocratic government. That’s the plan of the Greek establishment. This technocratic government will mess up. We are really lucky that the fascists want to be black-shirted type hoodlums, because in other countries fascists have developed a brain and reinvented themselves as democratic politicians. We are lucky for the moment that the fascists have no chance of ruling Greece, but that may not be the case forever. Continue reading...


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.theguardian.com