Greek households pay handsomely through their monthly electricity bills for state TV. It depends on their electricity consumption and living space. On the average it is 3,5-5,0 euros per month plus 23% VAT for a two bedroom apartment. A huge amount of money for a bankrupt country that is paid REGARDLESS if you own a TV set, if the set is open, if you watch the state TV "parrots" (called "parrots" for repeating letter by letter the government press releases), and if the apartment is foreclosed, abandoned or destroyed.
That is pure fascism but the "...working journalists" in the Kafkaesque universe of ERT never complained, or bothered, as long as they pocketed their hefty monthly salaries. The majority of them thanks to family connections and political parties' pure nepotism. After being fired last night from the Samaras government, they are crying foul, in plain daylight, expecting the rest of the world to feel sorry for them. They just discovered that austerity measures hurt anybody not just the anonymous"...others" protesting on the streets!
In the last four years, Greece was sold out piece by piece, according to plan, with numerous financial and ethical scandals and atrocities implemented (SIEMENS, Memorandum 1, 2, 3, 576.000 children impoverished, 1.6 million unemployed, kidney, cancer patients cut off from medical supplies. ATE bank, police violent crackdown of June 2011 at Syntagma square to name just a handful) but the news from the state-owned TV journalists were omitted, deleted, censored, and twisted.
State TV, or free TV, was an exclusive propaganda tool to the hands of the ruling political parties never serving the public interest let alone the Hellenic culture and civilization. The few bright exceptions that slipped through the cracks were just confirming the rigid and totalitarian rules of corruption in Hellenic state-controlled, self-serving, not public-serving, TV, web, and radio.
Another gruesome detail: 1.200 of the employees of ERT shall be compensated financially for being fired and then re-hired back and being paid again making tens or hundreds of thousands of euros!!! That is austerity Greek style!