Thanos Dimadis

Athanasios "Thanos" Dimadis (Greek: ΘÎ¬νος ΔημÎ¬δης) is a Greek journalist, political analyst, communications strategist, In 2018, Lally Weymouth, the senior editor of Washington Post, stated publicly about Dimadis "sets a great example to all young people who want to become journalists." Dimadis is currently the president of the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the United States. Dimadis is a member of the International Federation of Journalists and Journalists' Union of the Athens Daily Newspapers. In 2018, Dimadis was distinguished as a journalist with the Knight Bagehot Fellowship in economics and business journalism from Columbia University.
Career
Dimadis started his career in 2001. From 2001 to 2009, Dimadis worked from Athens as a journalist and political analyst for some of the most prominent media in Greece. Since 2010 he had been covering as an accredited foreign correspondent the Eurozone financial crisis from the International Monetary Fund, White House, State Department and policy-making institutions in Washington DC and, later, from the European decision-making centers in Brussels for the major broadcast media organizations of Greece, SKAI TV and ALPHA TV. Dimadis presented numerous political TV talks shows aired at SKAI and ALPHA TV. John Lipsky, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Poul Mathias Thomsen, Jeffrey Sachs, Irvin Yalom, Martin Schulz, José Manuel Barroso, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, , According to a report of the Hellenic League for Human Rights, "Thanos Dimadis, a correspondent for Greek TV and radio station SKAI, reported that he was instructed by his director not to disclose information that bailout payments had been only ‘partial’ and carried out ‘under a regime of strict economic surveillance’ in October 2012. As he refused to do so, his text was removed from SKAI TV’s website. He eventually resigned, as his complaints against this abuse remained unheard."
In September 2016, Greece’s distributed a news story that Dimadis from Greek ALPHA TV, along with another Greek journalist, was arrested in New York by the New York Police Department and the FBI facing criminal charges while they were pursuing an undercover reporting against the former Greek Minister Nikos Pappas during his visit in New York. The report from AMNA was followed by a confirmatory statement by Mr. Pappas that both journalists were arrested by the NYPD for falsification and false identity statement to the US authorities that they were temporarily released. The State Department's Diplomatic Security Office declassified documents refuting AMNA's story and revealing that Mr. Dimadis was never arrested or accused of illegal actions during his reporting and there was no police report from NYPD about Dimadis. A few days after the AMNA's story, the National Herald revealed of the Athens-Macedonian News Agency "was written by an employee at the Greek Press Office in New York. This incident again reveals how the government perceives the media's function. But also her total indifference to the consequences that the fake and the maximization of the case would have on journalists."
In August 2019, Dimadis in his speech as President of the Association of Foreign Correspondents in the United States, during the closing bell ceremony at Nasdaq urged foreign journalists "not to be afraid to speak out, show resistance, and denounce publicly any attempts to shut them down." In an interview at Nasdaq, Dimadis had stressed out the lack of press freedom and the independence of journalists in Greece. and as Director of IVY's Policy Program. Dimadis has also been a lecturer at the Political Management School of the George Washington University and the School of Telecommunications of the University of Florida.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu