The Greek Governments Answer to Freedom of Speech

At yesterday's IGF "Openness" panel, the case of Greek blog aggregator Antonis Tsipropoulos (blogme.gr) arrest was brought to the attention of Theodoros Roussopoulos from the Greek government. I'm again quoting the session transcript for the first part of the answer (see the transcript if you want to read all parts of his answer)

ROUSSOPOULOS: Well, I'm not aware of this case. But what I can state is that over the last period, we have had to face various bloggers who make any kind of references really untrue statements. In fact, these lies get on television and on other media which are widely followed in my country. So we have a problem with bloggers who spread lies through television. What we need to guarantee in a democratic environment is to respect professional codes of ethics and international rights guaranteeing the rights of everyone, but also giving the opportunity to freedom of expression, but also to the truth. Because there are people who are not politicians or business representatives but is the victim of slandering or defamation. How can this person deal with statements, untrue statements, made by a blogger against him?

Please don't judge the quality of the english, this is a transcript of the life translation! My personal interpretation: Roussopoulos is still angry and hurt because weblogs spread the news about the Greek wiretapping scandal across the border. Tough luck, a government spokesperson should be more professional. But feel free to judge his answer by yourself...

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