The ERT management has placed on administrative leave, a writer, a permanent employee of the public broadcaster, and a journalist producer responsible for tampering with the symbol of the KKE on the graphic card that was broadcast with the party’s New Year’s message.

The graphic designer, who was also the one who falsified the symbol, is referred to the Disciplinary Board for sanctions, while the journalist, who is a contract worker and did not check the content of the promotion as required, is facing the issue of non-renewal of her contract.

Specifically, during the ERT newscast at 6:00 p.m. Wednesday, the KKE was broadcast with an incorrect logo, where the hammer and sickle was missing and the torch of the Southwest was placed in its place.

The issue was brought to light with a post on social media by journalist Nikos Bogiopoulos, who also posted the photo.

KKE: “Unthinkable and unforgivable incident”

The reaction of the KKE was also strong, calling it an “unthinkable and unforgivable incident”, adding that it was a provocative image used on the internet by anti-communist, mainly fascist, groups.

The press office of the KKE immediately lodged a complaint to ERT, which said there was a mistake in the creation of the video. The public broadcaster told the Perissos people that the mistake was corrected in subsequent broadcasts, and assured that it would take all measures “to ensure that this video with the doctored emblem does not exist in its online media and that it will not be repeated.”

“The KKE denounces this incident as unacceptable, as it has done in similar cases in the past, and will move duly to the internet search engines to ensure that this particular doctored image does not appear as a finding related to the KKE,” the statement concludes.

The statement

An unthinkable, but also unforgivable, incident against the KKE took place on New Year’s Eve, when the main newscast of ERT at 18.00, and the report on the parties’ messages for the new year, showed the Party Central Committee’s Message for 2025, accompanied by a forged emblem of the KKE.

Specifically, instead of the official emblem with the hammer and sickle, used by the KKE on its ballots and elsewhere, an image was shown as a product of editing where the torch of the Southwest was depicted above the letters KKE! This is a provocative image that has been circulating for several years on the internet and used by websites and social media accounts of anti-communist content, mainly of the fascist area, and which has been officially and repeatedly denounced.

For this unthinkable incident, which caused the justified reaction of many people who watched this particular ERT broadcast, the Press Office of the KKE KKE’s Press Office made a direct protest to ERT, receiving the response that it was a mistake in the creation of the relevant video, as instead of drawing the emblem of the KKE from ERT’s graphics archive, it was frivolously drawn from internet sources and then ERT corrected the video for subsequent broadcasts. It has also received assurances that all measures will be taken to ensure that this video with the doctored emblem does not exist in its online media and that it will not be repeated.

The KKE denounces this incident as unacceptable, as it has done in similar cases in the past, and will move duly to the internet search engines to ensure that this particular doctored image does not appear as a finding related to the KKE.