THE NEGATIVITY with which the majority of the media has been covering the Christofias-Talat talks is quite astonishing. It is as if newspapers and television stations are willing them to fail. There have been 20 meetings so far and it would be no exaggeration to say that not a single one inspired a positive news report in the majority of the Greek Cypriot media.
Every meeting is followed by reports claiming unbridgeable differences between the two leaders, with Talat invariably blamed for not being prepared to compromise on anything and that Ankara was preventing him from negotiating. The unanimous verdict is that he is hell-bent on securing the establishment of a confederation – two separate states. Even when he expresses commitment to a federal settlement, his views are distorted, as was the case a few weeks ago, when Christofias censured the state broadcaster for wrongly translating Talat’s comments.
At the start of the talks, the president had encouraged the negativity by criticising Talat’s positions after every meeting and repeating the view that Ankara did not want a settlement. He eventually recognised that this was the wrong approach and changed tack, after meetings at Nicosia International Airport, restricting himself to vague and general comments about the topics that were discussed. Neither this, nor the president’s announcement that some progress has been made, has stopped the relentlessly negative reporting.
Considering that Christofias and his aides are no longer briefing journalists about what is being discussed, we can only assume that the source of information about the ‘unbridgeable differences’ and ‘big divergence of views’ was the Turkish Cypriot side. To be more precise, it is the journalists’ skewed interpretation of what the Turkish Cypriot side has been saying about the talks and it is invariably coming across as negative.
The majority of the media appear to be on a mission to prevent the two sides from reaching a compromise. The way the Olgac television confession about shooting Greek Cypriot POWs during the invasion was covered, dominating the news for days, strengthened the view that the media’s sole objective is to destroy any attempt at bringing the two communities together. The confession offered an excuse for television stations to repackage a pool of old stories about acts of brutality committed during the invasion and presented them as new revelations.
Poisoning the climate and driving the two communities as far apart as possible appears to be an end in itself for the media, which goes some way in explaining the absolute negativity which marks reports about the talks. Everyone can guess what role the media would try play in the event that Talat and Christofias moved closer to a deal. This is why Christofias and his associates should already start considering how media-generated negativity and opposition to a settlement can be countered.
