Migration and Illegal Pushbacks in Greece during the Global Pandemic: Two Worlds Collide

This paper investigates the communication strategies utilized by Greek state-affiliated media to positively portray the government's initiatives to combat illegal migration during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the study concentrates on the period between 2020 and 2022, analyzing government non-papers and reports disseminated to state-affiliated media, including the Athens News Agency and other sympathetic news outlets. The paper begins by establishing the link between state-affiliated media and the government before comparing news reports to the significant report published by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) in October 2022. OLAF's report discloses that the European Union (EU) border agency Frontex found that some of its personnel were complicit in concealing the illegal pushbacks of migrants from Greece to Turkey, in violation of their fundamental rights. By examining these findings, the study contends that Greek state-affiliated media and the government obscured the illegal pushbacks by framing them as Turkish propaganda or disinformation. Some of the most significant and severe incidents cited and comprehensively evaluated in OLAF's report have either been disregarded or entirely suppressed by Greek state-affiliated media. To explore the paper's main findings, the study employs an interdisciplinary framework, examining political and communication theories, and employing thematic analysis to scrutinize 50 news stories sampled from selected state-affiliated media.