Paul Mason: Greek side changing European journalism (video)

“These are some of the toughest negotiations I’ve ever seen,” said Paul Mason refering to the “information battle”

Journalist Paul Mason from Channel 4 provides information about what went on behind the scenes at the Eurogroup conference on Monday. Journalists in Brussels had been briefed that the draft that Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis’ said he would have signed didn’t even exist. Mason says that the document by European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici actually existed.

“The journalist’s job is to listen to claims and hear counter-claims and the problem that we have, those covering the Brussels’ negotiations, is that this is a new circumstance because the old way of working which is that you may get a little verbal briefing from somebody who is the spokesman of somebody else, maybe at midnight, to one or two chosen journalists, that’s the old way,” he says. “The new way is that the Greeks have gone in there and, without revealing my sources, it is clear that some leaks are coming of documents and of the process. Now, we have assymetry. We have an information flow to us from the Greek side and we have no, or not the same level of information, from the official side.”