"Austerity" becoming a dirty word in Greece?

The correspondent, Faye Karaviti, made the allegations after the term "austerity" was removed from her initial translation of an official German statement on Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to Athens on April 11th and replaced with "consolidation".

"I received a phone call from my colleague, the Editor in Chief Ioannis Nanos, who conveyed to me the 'displeasure of government circles' over the translation of the Chancellor's announcement regarding the visit of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Athens," Karaviti wrote in an open letter to ANA-MPA President-General Director Antonios Skyllakos.

Citing different reference sources, the correspondent insisted that her translation of the text was accurate and should remain unchanged. But the agency ignored her arguments and, without notifying her, later issued a revised version, perhaps aimed at making it "somewhat more palatable to the Greek electorate at the behest of the government," The Press Project said.

Karaviti said she was only later informed that a new version had been issued, in which the term 'austerity' was substituted by 'consolidation,' with the Greek equivalent of that word repeatedly misspelled throughout the text.

"However what was most troubling was that the corrected-wire bore my signature, without me being even informed of the fact, which is ethically, at best, unacceptable," the journalist stressed.

"More worrying is the fact that for the second time in the space of four months … one of my superiors at ANA-MPA has referred to the 'displeasure of the government,'" she said, adding that in the previous case she was threatened in writing after refusing to transmit 'news' that eventually proved to be false. "I question therefore, with good reason, if the ANA-MPA is an independent organization with the goal of providing timely information to the media, or a government propaganda machine".

The Press Project noted that ANA-MPA has recently issued a statement standing by its revised translation, insisting that it was supported by impartial experts at the German embassy, but not saying even a word about Karaviti's other allegations.