Eleven-year-old Nikiforos Papadopoulos sent a letter to the Greek Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras, concerning the closing down of the state public broadcaster, ERT.
“I wrote and sent a letter to the prime minister and I asked him to re-open ERT and to give the people who worked there their jobs back. I know that we in Greece owe a lot of money and that we have to pay back our debt, but the solution is not to shut down a public channel,” Nikiforos explained.
The Papadopoulos family is among the thousands who participated in the demonstrations and encouraged the media strikes in Athens. Nikiforos’ father, Polydefkes, is one of the employees in ERT, who now has to face unemployment.
“I am 52 years old. I have many working years in front of me until I’m eligible for a pension. There is no chance, they give you no chance. Unemployment among journalists here in Greece has risen 200 percent over the last two years,” Polydefkes pointed out.
“I feel terribly insecure, and so do my husband and my son. Moreover he keeps asking, “Dad, don’t you have a job anymore?” Nikiforos’ mother, Theano, explained.
As a result of ERT’s closing down, 2,656 employees were left without a job. In Greece, the country with the highest rates of unemployment in the Eurozone, it is doubtful that many of them will return to the job market.
It’s not just in Greece where journalists are facing cuts. Six hundred and fifty jobs have gone in the French public television, 150 have left Italy’s RAI channel and in February BBC journalists in Britain staged a walk out in protest over cuts, as reported in Euronews.
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