ERT airs convicted Golden Dawn ex-MP as NGO victim, then suspends Newsroom

The broadcast on Monday, 2 November

On the morning of Monday, 2 November, ERT's news programme Newsroom, presented by Giorgos Siadimas, ran a segment on the fraud case involving the NGO Paidiki Chara. In it, Panagiotis Iliopoulos appeared on screen with the captions "founder of a club" and "victim of the NGO". Reports said the segment did not mention his political or criminal past.

Iliopoulos, a former Golden Dawn MP, was sentenced by the Three-Member Felony Appeals Court of Athens to seven years in prison, with no mitigating circumstances, for membership in the criminal organisation. According to ERT's own account, the guest was found after a reporter saw a complaint on Facebook from a motorcycle club member who had paid money to the NGO. That member referred the reporter to the club's president, who went on air without any prior video check. ERT said the decision was driven by time pressure in a live, daily two-hour programme.

ERT's statement

On Tuesday, 3 November, ERT issued a statement describing the broadcast as "unacceptable oversight" and a lapse in journalistic management. The broadcaster said it had acted immediately and imposed sanctions on those responsible.

“The public broadcaster cannot and must not give space, through lapses in journalistic management, to the promotion of people and views linked to ideologies that turn against democracy.”

ERT expressed regret for the incident and said there was clearly no intent or hidden agenda on the part of the programme team. The statement stressed that defending democratic values is a non-negotiable principle of public broadcasting.

Sanctions and staff

Reports on the measures, citing information gathered by the press, said the Newsroom broadcast would be suspended until Friday, 6 November. iefimerida and NewsIT reported that the chief editor and the reporter who handled the story were placed on compulsory 10-day leave. One report said the reporters who covered the topic were also placed on 10-day leave without pay.

NewsIT described the case as a journalistic lapse rather than a deliberate act, a reading that ERT's own statement also set out. The suspension is the programme's only publicly reported consequence so far.

Reactions

Reactions on social media were intense, with viewers objecting to the presentation of a convicted figure as a victim. The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) issued its own statement criticising the broadcaster's explanation.

“The announcement, an "excuse" from ERT, constitutes an additional insult to the people and the victims of the Nazi Golden Dawn.”

The KKE said ERT's leadership did not name Iliopoulos with his full status as a former MP of the convicted organisation, and that its reference to ideologies opposed to democracy was a generality, not an oversight. The party called the matter neither a slip nor a mistake.