Demonstrators gather during Gezi Park protests on June 2 outside the building of the private Habertürk news channel to protest a televised interview with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in which the host of the show was accused of deliberately asking the prime minister softball questions. (Photo: Mustafa Kirazlı, Sunday's Zaman)
7 July 2013 /SEVGİ AKARÇEŞME, İSTANBUL
The Turkish media's initial blindness to the protests that started in Gezi Park in the last days of May threw Turkish TV networks into the spotlight, given the national media's already tarnished image.
The “deafening silence of the media in Turkey,” as European Commissioner Stefan Füle put it, almost overshadowed the incidents themselves. As a result, it is essential to evaluate the media's report card in recent years and compare it to examples in the West.
Journalism differs from other fields of “business” mainly because it has a moral obligation to inform public opinion about the “facts” and ask necessary questions on behalf of the people. In a great example of good journalism, during the Vietnam War, Seymour Hersh published pictures of the My Lai massacre in 1969 and orders to keep it secret. His work probably changed the course of the war; public support for the war declined in the US after the media covered those previously unknown facts.
More often than not, the media -- first print, then television -- have represented certain interests in Turkey. As professor of communications Aslı Tunç says, all governments used the media in Turkey for their own purposes because the structure of media ownership in the country made it possible. “Media owners cannot own a bank at the same time in the West,” says Tunç, adding that, as a result, the relationship between media and government is not free of control. On the contrary, in Turkey, as media ombudsman Yavuz Baydar says, over 70 percent of media companies are owned by conglomerates that have business ties with the state. It seems that while people complain about self-censorship in Turkey, especially during the Gezi Park protests, the extremely problematic nature of media ownership is often overlooked. It is the root cause of the lack of breathing room for reporters and columnists.
Bob Woodward, the iconic journalist who investigated the Watergate scandal, which led to the 1974 resignation of US President Richard Nixon, explains the success of his story in an interview published on his personal website. He says, “The key ingredients are owners who support this kind of in-depth work that takes time, costs money and includes risks, and editors who are tough minded” in response to a question asking whether the media could do similar digging today.
The so-called mainstream news channels in Turkey chose to air irrelevant shows. When CNN Türk aired a penguin documentary, penguins became the symbol of Turkish “self-censorship.” Indeed, the penguins' fame went far beyond the borders of Turkey as concerns were raised by EU officials.
The Turkish media's problems aren't limited to problematic media ownership. There has been almost no distinction between news and commentary in most newspapers. Since the two are mixed, as Tunç says, readers can't distinguish between them. “Turkish media is an opinion media,” says Tunç, while adding that in Turkey there hasn't been any investment in the training of reporters and analysts. She points out that in Western papers, on the other hand, op-eds are strictly separated from news stories although each paper has an editorial political stance.
The inability or unwillingness to distinguish facts from commentary looks innocent compared to the grave sins of the Turkish media. For example, during the Feb. 28 era in 1997, which resulted in the resignation of the elected government due to orchestrated behind-the-scenes efforts of the military, the “mainstream” media in Turkey deliberately became part of a “public relations campaign” against the government. It came out later that headlines were decided at military headquarters, editors-in-chief followed the orders of the generals and fabricated news stories were published and aired about the alleged Islamization of the country and so on. Tunç says it was a “bad period which crystallized” the problems of the media in Turkey.
According to Tunç, one example where the media passed the test was the Susurluk case in 1996, which revealed the tip of the iceberg of state-mafia relations. “It raised awareness in society, but Susurluk did not become a pattern,” says Tunç. Similarly, the newspaper coverage in the wake of the disastrous earthquake on Aug. 17, 1999, had an eye-opening impact on the people because it brought to light the state's inability to reach out to its citizens.
The mainstream media in Turkey did not learn from its mistakes and continued to publish loaded and misleading headlines: “411 hands rose for chaos” was the headline Hürriyet chose following the adoption of a law removing the ban on the wearing of headscarves on Feb. 10, 2008. Although the owner of Hürriyet and the Doğan Media Group, Aydın Doğan, described that specific headline as a mistake in his October 2012 testimony to the parliamentary Coup and Memorandum Investigation Committee, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper at the time, Ertuğrul Özkök, defended the headline.
Similarly, the day after a gunman attacked the Council of State on May 17, 2006, Hürriyet came out with a headline implying that the debate over the headscarf issue had led to the incident. Years later, it came out that the attack was another job by the “deep state,” which is still under trial as part of the Ergenekon case. An even more loaded and targeting headline appeared on the other end of the spectrum, in the daily Anadolu'da Vakit, which published the pictures of Council of State members who voted against lifting the headscarf ban. The headline read “Here are those judges.”
As far as the deep state is concerned, not all papers turned a blind eye. Zaman and especially Taraf did not hesitate to publish documents that evidenced military coup plots against the elected AK Party government in the 2000s as well as other plans to attack non-Muslim minorities in order to foment chaos in the country.
Before the media's stunning silence during the excessive use of force by the police in the first days of the protests in Gezi Park, there was another shameful silence. In the Uludere case in December 2011, when military jets accidentally bombed villagers on the southeastern border, for almost half a day the media remained silent. Again, it was social media that compensated for the conventional media in Turkey.
Although the Western media have a relatively better report card, they aren't innocent either. Tunç says that Sept. 11 was a test the US media failed because it became a tool for “selling the WMD argument.” However, the Western media differ from their Turkish counterparts, as the former are capable of self-criticism. “The US media later on admitted that it was a source of shame for them, but the Turkish media did not apologize for the penguins,” said Tunç.
According to Tunç, Gezi has become a turning point in Turkey since it proved that the new generation has reasons to distrust the media. “The generation of 1990 does not see the media as its voice, not necessarily in political terms, but in all areas of life,” comments Tunç, who adds that the Turkish media only reproduce old debates.
Whether Gezi Park will be a turning point for Turkish media is yet to be seen. Although it has undoubtedly added to the already stained record of the Turkish media, much depends on the composition of media ownership in the country.
The media will be free of its chains the day newspaper and TV owners are media owners only and have no connection to lucrative state tenders.
Journalism differs from other fields of “business” mainly because it has a moral obligation to inform public opinion about the “facts” and ask necessary questions on behalf of the people. In a great example of good journalism, during the Vietnam War, Seymour Hersh published pictures of the My Lai massacre in 1969 and orders to keep it secret. His work probably changed the course of the war; public support for the war declined in the US after the media covered those previously unknown facts.
More often than not, the media -- first print, then television -- have represented certain interests in Turkey. As professor of communications Aslı Tunç says, all governments used the media in Turkey for their own purposes because the structure of media ownership in the country made it possible. “Media owners cannot own a bank at the same time in the West,” says Tunç, adding that, as a result, the relationship between media and government is not free of control. On the contrary, in Turkey, as media ombudsman Yavuz Baydar says, over 70 percent of media companies are owned by conglomerates that have business ties with the state. It seems that while people complain about self-censorship in Turkey, especially during the Gezi Park protests, the extremely problematic nature of media ownership is often overlooked. It is the root cause of the lack of breathing room for reporters and columnists.
Bob Woodward, the iconic journalist who investigated the Watergate scandal, which led to the 1974 resignation of US President Richard Nixon, explains the success of his story in an interview published on his personal website. He says, “The key ingredients are owners who support this kind of in-depth work that takes time, costs money and includes risks, and editors who are tough minded” in response to a question asking whether the media could do similar digging today.
The so-called mainstream news channels in Turkey chose to air irrelevant shows. When CNN Türk aired a penguin documentary, penguins became the symbol of Turkish “self-censorship.” Indeed, the penguins' fame went far beyond the borders of Turkey as concerns were raised by EU officials.
The Turkish media's problems aren't limited to problematic media ownership. There has been almost no distinction between news and commentary in most newspapers. Since the two are mixed, as Tunç says, readers can't distinguish between them. “Turkish media is an opinion media,” says Tunç, while adding that in Turkey there hasn't been any investment in the training of reporters and analysts. She points out that in Western papers, on the other hand, op-eds are strictly separated from news stories although each paper has an editorial political stance.
The inability or unwillingness to distinguish facts from commentary looks innocent compared to the grave sins of the Turkish media. For example, during the Feb. 28 era in 1997, which resulted in the resignation of the elected government due to orchestrated behind-the-scenes efforts of the military, the “mainstream” media in Turkey deliberately became part of a “public relations campaign” against the government. It came out later that headlines were decided at military headquarters, editors-in-chief followed the orders of the generals and fabricated news stories were published and aired about the alleged Islamization of the country and so on. Tunç says it was a “bad period which crystallized” the problems of the media in Turkey.
According to Tunç, one example where the media passed the test was the Susurluk case in 1996, which revealed the tip of the iceberg of state-mafia relations. “It raised awareness in society, but Susurluk did not become a pattern,” says Tunç. Similarly, the newspaper coverage in the wake of the disastrous earthquake on Aug. 17, 1999, had an eye-opening impact on the people because it brought to light the state's inability to reach out to its citizens.
The mainstream media in Turkey did not learn from its mistakes and continued to publish loaded and misleading headlines: “411 hands rose for chaos” was the headline Hürriyet chose following the adoption of a law removing the ban on the wearing of headscarves on Feb. 10, 2008. Although the owner of Hürriyet and the Doğan Media Group, Aydın Doğan, described that specific headline as a mistake in his October 2012 testimony to the parliamentary Coup and Memorandum Investigation Committee, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper at the time, Ertuğrul Özkök, defended the headline.
Similarly, the day after a gunman attacked the Council of State on May 17, 2006, Hürriyet came out with a headline implying that the debate over the headscarf issue had led to the incident. Years later, it came out that the attack was another job by the “deep state,” which is still under trial as part of the Ergenekon case. An even more loaded and targeting headline appeared on the other end of the spectrum, in the daily Anadolu'da Vakit, which published the pictures of Council of State members who voted against lifting the headscarf ban. The headline read “Here are those judges.”
As far as the deep state is concerned, not all papers turned a blind eye. Zaman and especially Taraf did not hesitate to publish documents that evidenced military coup plots against the elected AK Party government in the 2000s as well as other plans to attack non-Muslim minorities in order to foment chaos in the country.
Before the media's stunning silence during the excessive use of force by the police in the first days of the protests in Gezi Park, there was another shameful silence. In the Uludere case in December 2011, when military jets accidentally bombed villagers on the southeastern border, for almost half a day the media remained silent. Again, it was social media that compensated for the conventional media in Turkey.
Although the Western media have a relatively better report card, they aren't innocent either. Tunç says that Sept. 11 was a test the US media failed because it became a tool for “selling the WMD argument.” However, the Western media differ from their Turkish counterparts, as the former are capable of self-criticism. “The US media later on admitted that it was a source of shame for them, but the Turkish media did not apologize for the penguins,” said Tunç.
According to Tunç, Gezi has become a turning point in Turkey since it proved that the new generation has reasons to distrust the media. “The generation of 1990 does not see the media as its voice, not necessarily in political terms, but in all areas of life,” comments Tunç, who adds that the Turkish media only reproduce old debates.
Whether Gezi Park will be a turning point for Turkish media is yet to be seen. Although it has undoubtedly added to the already stained record of the Turkish media, much depends on the composition of media ownership in the country.
The media will be free of its chains the day newspaper and TV owners are media owners only and have no connection to lucrative state tenders.