Illstration: BIRN/Igor Vujcic Code of Silence: Fear, Stigma Surrounding Abuse of Greek Women JournalistsEleni StamatoukouAthensBIRNDecember 12, 202207:30 Eleni StamatoukouAthensBIRNDecember 12, 202207:30Many female journalists in Greece remain too afraid to report the abuse and harassment they have endured at the hands of male colleagues, often in more senior roles. In most cases, they are unaware of any specific procedure in place for them to do so.
Thirty-three-year-old Zoe [not her real name] recalls her ordeal at a well-known Greek radio station:
“The 55-year-old news director used to force me into a corner and trap me to touch my body. Sometimes, he would have outbursts of anger and fire us… Later, my editor, a strict woman, used to call me an idiot. She told me so many times that I finally believed it.”
Then there was the “well-known journalist” who tried to kiss her when they went out for a drink, and then threatened to tell everyone they had gone out, “so I caved in and slept with him.”
“Years later I discovered he had done the same thing to two other women.”
Dimitra, 44, who also spoke on condition her real name not be used, said she suffered similar torment as a student of journalism, when her professor, a prominent journalist and director of the media outlet where she was due to intern, initiated a relationship.
When she tried to end it, “he threatened me, telling me he would kick me out [from the internship] and tell my parents about us. Out of fear, I continued with him. I was depressed. I was in such a bad state of mind that I was crossing the street and wishing I would get hit by a car. He freed me when I had a nervous breakdown.”
Their accounts are among dozens given to BIRN by female journalists in Greece, many of whom say they have faced harassment and abuse in their work.
Yet a culture of silence, stigma, and fear stops them from submitting complaints, BIRN has found, while many media outlets lack clear rules on how such abuse should be reported and dealt with. All the women spoke on condition that their real names not be used.
In 2022, the first three #metoo trials involving abuse in sport and culture took place in Greece the year after Olympic gold medalist Sofia Bekatorou accused a Hellenic Sailing Federation official of rape.
On social media, three female journalists began to share their own stories of sexual harassment and abuse, some of them daring to name the perpetrators. Yet, in the case of media, no one has been charged with any crime.
“After #metoo, I don’t consider it a coincidence that only three female journalists spoke out about harassment. It can’t be just three,” said Ntina Daskalopoulou, a journalist at the Greek media outlet EFSYN and who specialises in gender issues.
“The newsroom is masculine in culture and perception. It promotes the values of masculinity and strength,” she said. “These spaces can very easily become trespassing and conditionally abusive. It’s no coincidence that even today in Greece we haven’t researched trauma, harassment, and abuse of femininities in journalism.”
Abusing positions of power
In a BIRN survey of media workers, 94.5 per cent of respondents were women. Some 92 per cent described themselves as victims and eight per cent as witnesses to incidents that took place between 1993 and 2021.
The youngest victim was 17 years old, the oldest 62. Some 43 per cent of incidents were of a sexual nature, 35 per cent verbal harassment. Some 81 per cent happened at the workplace and in just over half of cases the perpetrator was a supervisor to the victim. Roughly 22 per cent of perpetrators were peers of their victims.
Illustration: Igor Vujcic/BIRN
Fear, uncertainty means harassment goes unreported
Marina, 33, agreed to speak only anonymously “because I haven’t felt a sense of safety from anyone, anywhere, not even at a peer level; I feel like they’re going to gossip about me, and accuse me of being crazy.”
She described being harassed by a man when she was 23 and reporting on a conference.
“I sat with a group of people in a position of authority in their field. I got drunk. This gentleman, who was over 60, offered to escort me to my room, but I refused. And there begins my painful part of not remembering much. I only remember a fight between us, him holding my hands and trying to kiss me. I returned to my room, where I shared it with another woman colleague, who did nothing to help me. Only my psychologist knows about this.”
According to the results of the BIRN survey, only 29.7 per cent of respondents were able to report what happened to them.
The rest could not bring themselves to do so, most commonly out of fear of not being supported, that they would lose their jobs and be stigmatised, and a lack of knowledge about what exactly would happen next. Almost 65 per cent said they were not familiar with the procedures for reporting such incidents.
“The dialogue on gender-based violence may be open, but in reality, it is not widely known by women how to get support,” said Malvina Soulele, a psychologist at Diotima, a centre for gender rights and equality in Athens. “Women need to know that they have somewhere to rely on, otherwise will feel very weathered and alone.”
Chara, 49, was too afraid to report repeated incidences of sexual, verbal abuse, and physical abuse. “I didn’t file a complaint because the sector is too small, and I was afraid that I would be stigmatised and lose my job,” she said.
“I told friends to be careful, but I didn’t know and didn’t ask if the same thing had happened to others, if they are afraid and know how to handle it.”
Illustration: Igor Vujcic/BIRN
In many cases, victims blame themselves, again leading to silence, experts say.
“There is a system in which nobody talks about these incidents; there is a social system as well that has normalised gender violence and harassment,” Soulele.
“A woman may not understand that she is being harassed because we have not learned to talk about this. We have learned that relationships could be like this. We have in mind that gender-based violence is femicide and sexual violence, but there is also verbal and psychological violence, which is a form of gender-based violence and equally important.”
In the BIRN survey, none of the cases reported went as far as a disciplinary board and none of the perpetrators were punished. Some 54 per cent of the women who responded remain/ed in the same workplace; 45.9 per cent left.
Lack of proper procedures
Two thirds of the media workers who responded to the BIRN survey said that their employers have no specific procedures in place for employees to file complaints; 86 per cent said their employers do not provide training in dealing with harassment and abuse; just 19 per cent said they had attended training at their own initiative concerning gender-based violence.
Illustration: Igor Vujcic/BIRN
“These results come as no surprise to someone who has worked in the media industry,” said Eleana Pandia, a PhD candidate and researcher in Media Psychology at Panteion University.
“It doesn’t matter how big or small the media is. You may have a family business that may be rife with verbal violence and abuse, and you may have a big company that may be well-demarcated, having fewer incidents or none. It’s not the size that counts; the issue is the quality,” Pandia told BIRN.
“It is a matter of rules, boundaries, and behaviour toward others. These are, unfortunately, very new issues for professional ethics in Greece. We have to talk about labour inequality at some point. Within labour relations, there is inequality. What makes the difference is who has the power.”
BIRN also contacted some 60 media outlets concerning the same issues, but only 11 replied.
Alter Ego Media S.A. said it “fully complies with current legislation” and had not received any complaints of harassment or abuse against female journalists; Barking Well Media also said it had not received any complaints and that it put in place procedures for dealing with such issues in August this year; Financial newspaper Naftemporiki told BIRN that it protects the rights of female journalists; Kathimerini Publishing S.A. said it does not have a special department dedicated to handling complaints of harassment; nor does the Athens-Macedonian News Agency, which said complaints can be made to a supervisor who decides whether to refer it to a disciplinary council.
At ERT, the public Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, a special department handles such cases and educational seminars are planned by the end of 2022; ERT told BIRN that two complaints have been filed – in 2017 and 2021. The company’s Disciplinary Council dismissed the first and has yet to rule on the second.
Athens 9.84 told BIRN: “The procedures are always activated in the radio station Athens 9.84. In its 35 years of operation, the station has not had to manage such an incident.”
Efimerida ton Syntakton, a cooperative, said it has no special procedures or training for such cases, telling BIRN: “Such phenomena are developed in established power relations. In EFSYN we are all equal. No complaints have ever been made.”
A representative of Rizospastis, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Greece, told BIRN that its employees are party members who have collegial relationships.
Independent media outlets Manifold, Reporters United, Solomon, and MIIR are small non-profit organisations consisting of between four and eight people. Only Solomon has had to deal with an incident of alleged sexual harassment which resulted in the perpetrator being fired. In 2021, the outlet organised a series of closed focus groups and interviews on the mental health of journalists, including the issues of harassment and abuse.
None of the four has special procedures in place for dealing with such complaints.
MIIR said that “the collective decision-making processes set clear limits regarding behaviour”. Solomon said that it receives assistance from third parties, while Manifold told BIRN that, “apart from the fact that it maintains a gender balance in its composition (three women, two men), the relationships between the members have a history of trust that can be considered solid.”
However, Stella Kasdagli, co-founder of Women On Top, which works to promote workplace equality, said that nothing can justify the absence of a clear framework for victims to report incidents and have them investigated.
“Many organisations and companies show resistance to the change that equality and safety at work require,” said Kasdagli.
“This means that they cite their size, their “good” or “friendly” internal climate, their liberal culture, and/or the absence of previous such complaints, to justify the absence of policies, procedures, and a safe reporting framework and incident investigation.”
“Unfortunately, media organisations in Greece often fall into more than one of these categories. And, unfortunately, there is still no mechanism to control them and push them toward more effective accountability.”
Illustration: Igor Vujcic/BIRN
Can things change?
Margarita, 33, who said she was “shoved” by another prominent journalist so he could take her desk, said that, while the debate had opened up, she was “not very optimistic” of real change.
“Today we talk about things that we didn’t talk about before. However, I find that there is a code of silence in the field and things are 100 per cent in favour of men,” she said.
“If it will change, it will be changed by women, by the fact that they support each other and there are more partnerships between us.”
Xenia Kounalaki, international news editor and columnist at Kathimerini, said that things had improved a little from the times when a woman found it hard to be heard.
Now 50, Kounalaki entered journalism at the age of 24. Comments on her appearance, touching, and disdain for her opinion were part of her everyday life.
“However, I have never been sexually harassed myself, mainly because I was somewhat networked due to my father’s involvement in politics,” Kounalaki said. “Other women my age who did not have this kind of ‘protection’ suffered at the time. Now, that doesn’t happen. Thanks to #metoo there is fear and embarrassment, even to the point of exaggeration. Men often ask me, ‘Can I tell this joke?’ as if feminism involves a lack of humour,” she told BIRN.
“On the other hand, in positions of responsibility, women are still a bitter minority. I’m alone at the Sunday meeting, so it’s almost exclusively men who decide what the readership is interested in. As long as I live I hope that will change.”
Daskalopoulou, of EFSYN, however, said change would be difficult “as long as the media ecosystem is structured like this”.
“As long as journalists remain unprotected without having a collective work agreement that ensures them respectable conditions of work but also contains a series of such institutional issues, one cannot be too optimistic. As long as the work is undervalued and therefore the subjects, I cannot be optimistic.”
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