Party Politics, NGOs and the Media in Greece

It has already been 5 years since Greece first entered into a period of unprecedented economic crisis - a crisis that saw an end to the previous prosperous era. Under these new conditions, the welfare state in Greece started to falter. Unemployment skyrocketed, while more and more people started working without social insurance. The state?s social care system almost collapsed, leaving vulnerable people exposed. The number of homeless people is increasing day by day, while those struggling to find food have multiplied during these years.Greek Organized Civil Society, although underdeveloped compared to other European states, stood up in order to cover the state?s insufficiency. Yet, cases of corruption with the engagement of NGOs in the past have raised a lot of questions regarding the motives behind the actions of some NGOs. Accusations have become a frequent phenomenon in the press throughout recent years, creating a false image of the NGO sector in Greece. Political accusations have found a fertile ground to prosper, causing severe damage to the image of the NGOs. While it is true that a number of scandals regarding the work of specific NGOs that have been brought into the limelight were valid, the generalizations that followed hammered the public image of the entire sector. To this end, the NGO sector became an easy battle-ground for political provocations and accusations, usually without reason.