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BBC News - Struggling Greeks losing belief in the state
It may be of course that I am overestimating the dangers. But here is another problem of perception: in the three hours I spent at or close to the front of the rioting on Sunday night, I did not see a single other television crew. Ours was repeatedly harassed, verbally and physically, most harshly by a small group of right wingers who accused us of being German.At the start of the demo I saw one other (foreign) TV crew and that was it. Parts of the Greek broadcast media have long since given up telling the story of the streets; for most of them it is too dangerous, such is the popular hostility to a media many believe is in the pocket of a corrupt political class.That is sad, but here's the wider problem this creates. If you are Schauble, Rehn, Merkel, Lagarde, you are increasingly flying blind in this crisis. The Greek papers, heavily politically aligned, can only partially reflect what is happening. The Greek politicians you talk to spend their nights shuttered behind grilles in anonymous offices - they cannot appear in public, they cannot get a feel of the streets.The Greek politicians in power cannot deliver the country they run to an austerity package they do not believe in. And after the election, power is likely to be even more fragmented.Just as the combined might of the IMF and the Greek government is pulling economic levers that do not work, the more insidious problem is that they are pulling political strings that are broken.You can watch Paul Mason's full report on the personal and political impact of the Greek crisis on Friday 17 February at 22.30 GMT on BBC Two.
