Primary Source News: Protests in Greece

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Protests in Greece

Protests are taking place in Greece amid a massive financial crisis. Standard and Poor recently lowered Greece's credit rating to CCC, indicating that their government may be close to default. Amid these protests, the Prime Minister George Papandreou has offered to step down.

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Mission Statement

In historical scholarship, a primary source is a document, sound recording, video recording, original work or other source of information that was created at or near the time being studied, often by the people being studied. In this sense primary does not mean superior. It refers to creation by the primary players, and is distinguished from a secondary source, which is a historical work, like a scholarly book or article, built up from primary sources.

Given that in the modern age we have vast amounts of information available, the question often arises, "What can we know for sure?" The Internet and information technology have made primary source materials more widely available than ever before, yet the presentation of the news is too often commentary with little substance.

The interviews, government documents, statements, art and images we are providing represents the raw data that is the news. A picture of the news that only examines primary sources is, of course, incomplete. But a picture that only involves debate and opinion may lose sight of what the story actually is.