Free Speech
Greek Style
Athens News Γιάννης Χορν
John
Wilcock
Penthouse
magazine January 1973
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ
FREE
SPEECH—GREEK STYLE
Since the
advent of the military government five years ago, the contemporary heroes of
Greece have been mainly drawn from the arts. A number of writers and composers
are, or have been, in jail and a handful of singers and actresses are in
voluntary or enforced exile. But perhaps the most outstanding heroes,
considering the country’s prohibitive censorship laws, are the editors.
A few years
ago it was said of conservative publisher-editor Helen Viachou [:Ελένη Βλάχου]
that “the only man in Greece is a woman”. At a time when most Greeks accepted
the coup without protest, she stood up to the regime and refused to print
unless censorship was lifted. Eventually she had to leave the country.
Today the
most outspoken criticisms of the Papadopoulos regime come from another editor,
Yannis Horn [:Γιάννης Χορν], He does not work on one
of the once powerful Greek dailies, but edits a tiny (4000 circulation)
English-language paper called Athens News,
and he’s a rumple-haired maverick who, despite publishing his daily tabloid for
nearly 30 years, still speaks and writes no English !
It may be
partly because of this limitation that he is now facing a jail sentence under
the press law that categorizes misleading headlines as a distortion that gets a
mandatory prison term. One paragraph of an anti-regime story—the portion on
which the headline was based—was inadvertently dropped and the paper was
printed before Horn became aware of it.
Despite his
indictment, or may be because of it, during the past few months Horn [:Χορν] has turned what used to be
a bland tourist sheet into a persistent critic of the regime. For example he
estimated that the government would get, at most, 15% of popular support if
elections were held, and he claims that Papadopoulos’ major accomplishment has
been to take privileges away from politicians only to award them to wealthy
shipowners.
Ironically
enough the junta’s determination to abolish politicians (and there is fairly
widespread agreement that maybe a majority of them were corrupt and abusing
their positions) has merely turned Greeks’ vicarious attentions to American
politics. They believe American activity to be the key to their own domestic
problems. “The CIA had 1000 men working in Greece even before the coup,” Horn
maintains.
Of necessity
the gadfly role of the paper has to be more subtle than direct. It takes care
to report all instances of foreign criticism of Greece (‘Democrats deplore U.S.
support of Greece”; “U.S. students denounce Greek regime”), and every
opportunity is taken to snipe at the powers-that-be via parallels with other
countries.
On July 14th, for example, the Athens News front-paged a greeting to
the French, concluding that it especially wished them “the courage to inspire
in their government more respect for the fundamental rights of other people,
including Greeks...”
The highspot
of the News has always been a column called “Greek News In Brief”. Readers
immediately turn to its one-sentence tales of battling truck drivers biting off
each other's ears or septuagenarian ladies seducing teenagers. The column is
still running and recent items have concerned the prison term of one Xenofon
Stath..….., 18, “for suddenly embracing and kissing” a 35-year-old woman
walking along a Pyrgos street; a farmer who drowned when his “argumentative
gestures” towards a neighbor toppled him into an irrigation ditch ; complaining
neighbors of an elderly spinster whose 150 pet mice, all with their own names,
caused a disturbance; 20 longhaired French tourists turned away from a
male-only monastery in Northern Greece because the monks found it hard to
determine their sex ; and a stabbing in Crete for what were vaguely described
as “reasons of honor’’.
Other items
have offered more food for thought: e.g. the recent disclosure by the mayor of
Megara that a Byzantine church on the edge of his town was originally
constructed to seal off a water supply whose effects caused citizens to become
“abnormally sexually excited”. Furthermore, the mayor revealed, the Turkish
governor at the time commanded the church to be built in a single night or the
entire male population would be decapitated. The church was finished in time.
But even the
sometimes flippant ‘News in Brief’ has been getting injections of political
comment in recentissues. One such story read :
“Coach driver
loannis Bol…. has been referred for trial by a Rhodes court for insulting the
authority and behaving in a teddyboyish manner in violation of law 4000, it was
reported yesterday. The reports said that Bol…. was telling shocking jokes
connected with the present political situation in his country from the
loudspeaker system of his bus to schoolboys and schoolgirls during excursions.”
Editor Yannis
Horn [:Γιάννης Χορν] ran the item deadpan and
made no comment. None was necessary.
—John
Wilcock.
Penthouse magazine, January 1973, p. 26.
Γιάννης Χορν
(1912-1999)
Εκδότης της αγγλόφωνης εφημερίδας
“Athens
News”
(1952-1993)
ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΓΡΑΦΟΣ
[ ανάρτηση 23 Φεβρουαρίου 2024 :
Free Speech Greek Style
Athens News
Γιάννης Χορν
John Wilcock
Penthouse magazine January 1973
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ ]
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