Copyright ©2001. All Rights Reserved. The Effects of Media Commercialization on Journalism and Politics in Greece Stylianos Papathanassopoulos Department of Communication and Mass Media, National and Capodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece 10562 This paper tries to describe the effects of media modernization and commercialization in journalism and taking as example the case of contemporary Greece. This paper is organized into two parts. The first deals essentially with the effects that the new structure of the Greek media system has imposed on professional journalism, while the second deals with the changes that this new media environ- ment has caused in the political world. It argues that these changes have led to a new battle between the media owners and politicians over who will control the public and political agenda and a new rela- tionship between them. KEY WORDS: Greece; journalism; politics; interplay; political communica- tions; professionalism; autonomy. In the age of television dominance, commercialization and interna- tionalization of communications and the economy, it is commonly argued that there has been a process of convergence among media systems and practices, diminishing national and regional differences (McQuail, 1994, pp. 28-29; McQuaiL 1995, pp. 11-12). Europe may be the best place to examine this process, since the rapid commer- cialization of diverse European media systems has affected Euro- pean journalism and political communication. News reflects in its content the political structure of its society (Hallin, 1994, pp. 114-115), and each national system still differs in The Communication Review, Vol. 3(4), pp. 379-402 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by license only 379 © 1999 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) N.V. Published by license under the Harwood Academic Publishers imprint, part of The Gordon and Breach Publishing Group. Printed in Malaysia.