Syriza and the new economic narrative

Greece's Syriza party challenges the media narrative on austerity. And, the close ties between journalists and NGOs.



Since Greece's left-wing Syriza party was elected into power on January 25, 2015, it has received a frosty reception from much of the mainstream European media. Much of the mainstream media are still pushing a pro-austerity line but Syriza's finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has been challenging neo-liberal orthodoxy - as well as dress codes - in Europe's newspapers and on its TV screens.

The headlines in the German media have been especially tough, and some have been accused of scaremongering. Syriza's plans for Greece represent a political shift, but are journalists too attached to economic binaries to tell this story accurately?

Taking us through the story this week are: media scholar Maria Kyriakidou; Paul Mason, the economics editor of Britain's Channel 4 News; Christian Rickens, the head of the business desk at Der Spiegel Online; investigative journalist Yiannis Baboulias; and Julian Reichelt, the editor-in-chief of the best-selling German tabloid Bild.