Just another Greek 'riot'

After more than 20 consecutive days of peaceful protest in Greece's main public squares against cuts, the relative media silence was broken on the 15th of June. The spark for the sudden frenzy of reporting from that part of the world crisis was that the stage was finally set to play out the story to the usual tune.

Why is it that a popular, peaceful protest is ignored for over 20 days and 'extensively covered' when there is the slightest hint of trouble? That may explain the hostility of some protesters against mainstream media crews who only bother to show up when there is a riot. But it is not true that reporters were not present the previous days. Individual stories are subject to chief editor's approval and I guess a popular movement for democratic change is not as 'newsworthy' as a riot. Individual reporters in the corporate media make a half-decent effort at an accurate portrayal of the situation but unfortunately the norm is to stick to the familiar script. The familiar script will inadvertantly always designate some violent anarchists or other 'troublemakers' depending on the context. This time global media networks had to wait more than 20 days in order to report the story the way they wanted.

Anyway, the result was that protesters were tear-gassed indiscriminately by the police and Athens's Syntagma Square was cleared for a few hours while a few co-opted MPs inside parliament decided the future of 11million people, and that, of course, also went unreported. That is a very grim image of the future if you ask me.