The myth of journalistic impartiality under austerity

“Stuff is biased” lamented a Greek journalist after a piece of mine was published in the New Statesman last February. In the piece, I was making the case that four young anarchists who had been arrested after a failed bank robbery were subjected to torture by the Greek police. Nowhere was I hiding what they did. By simply looking at the evidence, I made my case. The police’s side did not feature in any prominent way in that piece, or its follow-up, mainly because their announcements were inconsistent, and the evidence they provided shaky or fake. Their side though, and the Ministry of Citizen Protection’s, who jumped to their defence, was the only thing on Greek TV channels and newspapers (with few exceptions) for days. On the same day the piece was published “reports from foreign media simply seek to demonise the Greek police, not thinking that these people have mothers too” a pro-austerity TV station broadcasted, its aggressively partial pundit failing to mention who he was talking about (only the New Statesman and The Guardian had run the story on the day).