Why the media lies about Greece

by Jérôme E. Roos on June 24, 2011

In a short BBC interview today, I argued that the media’s witch hunt against Greece perpetuates a false impression that the Greeks themselves are to blame.

With special thanks to Naveena Kottoor, I was able to appear on BBC World Have Your Say today, for a brief segment on the international media’s coverage of the Greek debt crisis.

Asked whether I agreed that the international media are engaged in a ‘witch hunt’ against the Greek people, I pointed out that all talk about the Greeks being profligate, lazy and spoilt is simply not true (video below, my contribution from 34m50s onwards — somehow the audio got messed up):

 

Unfortunately, however, I didn’t get the time to back up these assertions with hard facts — so I would like this to use the opportunity to do so here.

Special thanks for the data below go out to Alex Andreou and Ingeborg Beugel.

MYTH #1: The Greeks are profligate

World Debt – Proof that someone is stringing some nations along when they should be saving someone else

Go take a look at the world debt clock at http://www.economist.com/content/global_debt_clock. We’ve heard about it, probably seen it as well. But this time shed your eyes on the map beneath the clock and just for the fun of it, to the right of the map compare three countries. I just chose Greece, the U.S. and the United Kingdom, seeing as the last two countries have never been mentioned on the news as being debt-ridden. I won’t say anything more. I simply counted the zeros in the total amount of public debt and looked at the percentage of total annual debt change.

Now take a look at the table below and tell  me what’s wrong with Greece which isn’t wrong with other countries.