Greece’s public TV employees broadcast a Web-TV signal in a control room at the ERT headquarters in Athens yesterday, a day after a shock decision by the government to shut down the state broadcaster’s operations.
ATHENS: Greece’s government faced an internal revolt and public outrage yesterday over the sudden closure of state broadcaster ERT, hours after the humiliation of seeing its bourse downgraded to emerging market status.
The twin setbacks, coupled with the derailing of a troubled privatisation programme, reversed a rise in investor confidence that had prompted Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to say the risk of a “Grexit” from the euro was dead and a “Greekovery” was under way.
Yields on Greece’s 10-year benchmark bond crept back above 10 percent after Athens failed to sell state gas firm DEPA on Monday, putting it at risk of missing bailout targets.
The stock market traded at two-month lows after Greece became the first developed nation ever to be lowered to emerging market status by equity index provider MSCI.
Samaras’s government declined comment on the market reclassification as it tried to fend off a growing backlash against ERT’s dramatic closure that prompted outrage from journalists, unions and leaders across the political spectrum.
The public broadcaster was yanked off air just hours after the shutdown was announced in what the government said was a temporary measure to staunch an “incredible waste” of taxpayers’ money prior to its relaunch as a slimmed-down station.
Labour unions called a 24-hour national work stoppage for Thursday and journalists went on an open-ended strike, forcing a news blackout on privately owned television and newspapers.
“The strike will only end when the government takes back this coup d’etat which gags information,” the ESIEA union said.
Some ERT journalists occupied the broadcaster’s building in defiance of government orders and broadcasted over the Internet, showing sombre newscasters deploring the shutdown and replaying images of thousands gathered outside to protest.
ERT’s reporters from as far away as Australia appeared on air to describe the outrage of local Greek communities. “It is our only link with our homeland,” said Odysseas Mandeakis, president of the Greek community in Zambia.
In Athens, the ERT crisis overshadowed MSCI’s reclassification of the country, whose bourse it said had not met the developed market criteria for size for two years.
Reuters
