One of our people passed away, the journalist Costas Betinakis

He fought stubbornly and bravely until the last moment with the disease that plagued him.
Despite the serious problems he faced, he wrote his articles every day and passionately supported what he wanted. Stubborn did not pour water into his wine when he discussed and wrote on topics related to the great political problems facing people today.

A Cretan yet did not raise a fly on his sword when issues of values, dignity and humanity were touched upon. The “Jungle” family wishes his wife, daughters and grandchildren a deepest condolences. It is common in these cases for someone to write a few words about the life of a colleague who is leaving for the big trip. Here in the newsroom we let Kostas Betinakis himself tell us two things about his life as he lived them and how he remembered them.

Life and status …

I was born on June 25, 1948 to Michalis and Kaiti. Both were of Cretan origin. I spent my childhood in Harokopou of Kallithea. The first letters I learned from Arsakeiada’s grandmother, Lili Zacharioudaki.

But Kinaygeirou street no longer exists
. And all my childhood friends live elsewhere.

Elementary and High School I went to Athens College. I studied Journalism at Homer and Economics and Political Science at the WTO in Law.
In 1968, while still a student at Homer, I took a job exam for a newly published newspaper. CURRENT.
I came first. It was the only first time that I was successful. Thus I became an apprentice journalist, in a team (together with Babis Papadakis, Manos Khourdakis and Andreas Daldakis) that was later headed by Lykourgos Kominis with his collaborators Stavros Apergis, Dimitris Katsimis, Dimitris Koumbias. There I met my old classmate Spyros Kominis and we became close friends and he played a role in our discussions in shaping many points of view that I have settled on.

Until January 1970, when the newspaper was published, I worked without pay and my texts were published in the Free World (in the morning of Savvas Konstantopoulos). It was a time of meetings.
From the beginning of my journalistic career I worked in the Foreign Bulletin – or in the International as they said later. Along with Memos Farakos, Giorgos Leonardos (in Simerina) and Asteris Stagos (later in Eleftherotypia).
Thanks to the unforgettable Dino Tsaloglou, I found a second job at the HRONOS business newspaper, which I left in protest when Dinos was fired. Judging that I had the luxury of the dignity to choose employers.
As soon as I completed three years of TSPEATH, I decided to postpone my postponement and serve my term, so that when I return I will be ready to enroll in the Union.
I served as a reserve officer in the PV, almost my entire term in Evros. For six months on stage, during the recruitment period, I was fired after a period of 28 months (October 1972-February 1975).

When they fired me, the board had fallen, TODAY it had closed and I was unemployed, since I did not want to continue in the “Free World”. I wrote in ESIEA from the Mixed, in 1979, unfair years of party unionism. Some did not write me as “left” and others as “right”.
I was hired by ERT, on the radio for Foreign Bulletin on March 7, 1975 and on March 15, we married Mina, who gave me Katerina (1977) and María (1979).
Until November 2001, when I retired early, I worked for NRA Radio International and later as Editor-in-Chief of First Program and International Television, as well as Editor-in-Chief and Director of the Reporting Office.
In June 1975 the newspaper ESPERINI was published, where I worked only until August 20, because at that time ELEFTHEROTYPIA was published. I was also one of the 80 in the “Authors Magazine”. In fact, I was elected to the Committee of the Authors’ Cooperative, with G. Katsonis as president and Panagiotis Diamantis as secretary. At Eleftherotypia, I become Head of the Foreign Newsletter for the first time, after Asteris Stagos left for good and then George Leonardos for America. He was then 28 years old. I will keep this “title” until my early retirement, due to my mandatory exit from ERT, at the end of October 2001.
In 1979 I went to MESIMBRINI by Takis Lamprias, along with Katerina Daskalaki, Giannis Leloudas and Pantelis Trogadis, but in the summer of 1981 I went to EGNATIA in Thessaloniki, owned by Voudouri. In six months he would publish in Athens Free Press with Lykourgos Kominis. But PASOK’s electoral victory in November 1981 is mediated, so I return as editor-in-chief of the First Hellenic Radio Program. Directed by George Koronaios. At the same time, I was almost hired by ETHNOS by Aleko Filippopoulos. Foreign Bulletin, along with Spyros Kominis, Ourania Lampsidou, Dino Tsakotelis …

From there, Leon Karapanagiotis invited me to NEA in 1984, to be with Lykourgos Kominis, Giannis Metzidakis and Panos Geramanis at the core of NEON’s transformation into a tabloid. At NEA I was again close to Costas Galanopoulos, whom I had appreciated very much for our collaboration on ERT television, and I again met my old partner Dimitris Tsalapatis. To dry our friendship since then.

From time to time I collaborated with Makis Triantaphyllopoulos radio efforts first on “SUPER FM” and then on “OH FM”, hosting “Crazy-Crazy World” on the weekends.

In 2001 I decided to move on to a new stage in my life. So I would make my dream come true, but instead of a print, I had my own website and lots of designs.

stix: In June 2002 I created what I call an alternative online magazine: www.styx.gr.

However, I continued giving collaborations for the International Youth τον until the death of Leontas Karapanagiotis. His replacement interrupted our cooperation. Also, we had so many political differences …
Tsalapatis was the reason for my return to trade unionism, as I had already been the first representative of the authors of ETHNOS on the Joint Council of ESIEA (1981). I participated in the PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS MOVEMENT created by the unforgettable colleague Giannis Fatsis.
During three consecutive terms I was the representative of the NEON editors in the Mixto, and then I was elected a member of the Board of Directors of POESY (2001). My position was then assumed by Costas Delezos, of the Professional Journalists Movement, when together with Dimitris Tsalapatis we were elected to the Board of ESIEA, in May 2003.
On January 20, 2004, I was elected Vice President of the ESIEA Educational Foundation.
In June 2005 I was re-elected to the ESIEA Board.

In October 2005 I returned to the Foreign Bulletin in print and became the editor-in-chief of International at PRESS TIME. But I endured the arbitrariness of managing the newspaper for only two and a half months. I resigned after intervening: censorship from the American embassy, ​​who did not like my articles.

On May 15, 2006, the Athan awarded me an award. Botsi, “for my 35 years of successful career in journalism and the creation of the first electronic magazine in the country.”
In June 2007, I was re-elected for a third term on the ESIEA Board. When we finally managed to form a presidency, I was elected secretary general. And then, for the second time, vice president of the ESIEA Educational Foundation.

My union course was interrupted in the June 2009 elections because I was not re-elected as a councilor. So I found more time for “styx.gr”.

Since September 2012, at the invitation of my old TA NEI colleague Maki Triantaphyllopoulos, I have been collaborating with the “zougla.gr” website, enriching the “stix”. For a few months in 2013 I was presenting from the Web-TV “of the” Jungla “a television version of the old radio” Crazy-Crazy World “.

Not for a moment for more than twelve years, I have stopped enriching with articles the “stix” that has now acquired a “book of moths” while since May 2014 it has had a “facelift”.

In the June 2015 ESIEA elections, Dimitris Tslapatis placed me on the KED ballot, from which the same councilor was elected and my colleagues honored me, with their vote, to serve on the three-member Audit Committee.

MISSIONS:

My first journalistic mission abroad was in Damascus. After the massacre of the guards in Hama by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Other trips to the Middle East will follow, mainly to Israel and the occupied territories, most recently after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

I made several trips to the Soviet Union, the first during Brezhnev (Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Yerevan) and then several trips during the era of Gorbachev’s “perestroika”.

In the 60 years of the Bolshevik Revolution, I spent more than a month in Moscow. I returned to Moscow “twenty years later” for the IFJ conference, when I found myself in a different world: the post-communist era.

I followed Andreas Papandreou on his tour of the European capitals, when Greece assumed the presidency of the EEC for the first time. As well as on his trip to New Delhi, when together with Ranjiv Gaddy (Palme and Nierere) they promoted the “Six initiative”.

I accompanied Konstantinos Karamanlis on his last presidential mission to Bucharest (during Ceausescu). There, together with the unforgettable Antonis Kalamaras, we had a long in-depth discussion (but off the record) with the President, with the main theme “the problem of Education” in the country.

I saw as the envoy of the First Radio Program, the presidential elections in the United States in 1988, when the candidate of the Democratic Party was Mike Doukakis.

I was again (sent by TA NEA) to the United States almost ten years later with Turkish and Cypriot journalists, as omens of “dealing with the Greek-Turkish crisis.”

I did several missions to Turkey (Ankara – Istanbul). In one of them, I was interviewed by the later Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Orhan Pamuk.

I visited Beijing and Shanghai with a delegation from ESIEA.

I also went to Japan to worship at the Hiroshima Mausoleum. I also visited Tokyo and Manchu, where Lefkadios Hearn is honored as a national writer for Japan.

I went to Brussels several times to attend meetings of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), as well as the EFJ conference in Berlin, as a member of the International Committee of the ESIEA Board.

I participated in almost all the journalistic conferences that had taken place in Samothrace (they are no longer there) …

But my most intense emotions were offered by a country that no longer exists: neighboring Yugoslavia tortured.

Or when I participated in the Congresses of the Federation of Yugoslav Journalists or as a war correspondent.

Posted by TA NEA, I lived close, on multiple missions, to the entire drama of the Yugoslav tragedy in the 1990s: the war in Bosnia, Kosovo and culminating in elections, the brief coup, and the overthrow of Milosevic.

As a member of SEEMO (South East European Media Organization) I participated in a series of Organization conferences in various Balkan countries (Serbia, Turkey, Bulgaria), on behalf of ESIEA.
Good luck, I found myself in my professional maturity under the guidance of the distinguished “patrician” of journalism, the unforgettable Leontas Karapanagiotis.

I owe a lot to Lykourgos Kominis, who had me in his elections as his collaborator (Ta Simerina, Eleftherotypia, Egnatia, ETHNOS, TA NEA).

Coasts Betinakis

Journalist

ΥΓ. I feel a special joy, since since February 2014 María made me a grandfather. My grandson Nicholas gave me unprecedented meaning in life. And then the second joy: Margarita’s birth in October ’15. Twice grandfather.

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