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JUST WHY WE ARE 'PRESSING FOR FREEDOM'
Hurriyet
June 6 2010
Turkey
At the accelerated pace of Turkish journalism, three months is an
eternity. High-stakes, high-passion issues tend to knock one another
off front pages in rapid sequence. So it seems an eternity ago when
in late February, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan went off on
newspaper columnists.
He accused scribes of focusing on the negative, of even driving down
the Istanbul Stock Exchange. He demanded that newspaper owners fire
columnists straying outside the narrow band of his approval.
The tirade hardly came as a surprise. Politicians everywhere, even
in democracies, often take pains to manage the press and the ability
to do so is a skill in demand everywhere. France's Nicolas Sarkozy
is hardly fond of the media. Italy's Silvio Berlusconi is even less
so, which he has remedied by buying large sections of it. America's
politicians are among those quick to blame the press. This past week,
Barack Obama lamented criticism over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It
is in the nature of the political and journalist classes to clash.
But Erdogan's government has made complaints about the media a near
obsession. No need to go into the recent record here, a history that
includes boycott efforts, cancelled accreditations and the draconian
tax fine against our corporate parent.
As Anthony Mills, press freedom manager for the Vienna-based
International Press Institute, put it after Erdogan's latest outburst:
"Although this is not the first time the prime minister has criticized
the media, the comments he made are extremely worrying. Because what he
seems to be suggesting, if I understand correctly, is that newspapers
get rid of columnists who overstep boundaries that are defined by him."
It was after this latest outburst that we decided it was time to
establish a bit of context. On the one hand, Turkey has a very robust
and lively news media. What other European city has more than 30
dailies? They range from the xenophobic to the nationalist to the
Marxist to the libertarian, not to mention the ethnic dailies that
include the established Armenian, Greek and Jewish press as well as the
emergent Kurdish-language media. On the other hand, a gutsy press that
is willing to challenge the powers that be is hardly new to Turkey. The
tumultuous history of Turkish newspapers is almost two centuries old
and the news media of a contemporary standard dates to the early 1950s.
Since that February outburst, reporters Ozgur Ogret and Mustafa Akyol,
along with editor Stefan Martens, have been hard at work on what you
will read this week. As you will see, it is a diverse, complex and
many-faceted portrait. But the leitmotif in this long-running media
symphony is struggle. It has never been easy. It is not so today. But
Turkish journalists are, as our series title suggests, undaunted and
still "pressing for freedom."
From: A. Papazian
Hurriyet
June 6 2010
Turkey
At the accelerated pace of Turkish journalism, three months is an
eternity. High-stakes, high-passion issues tend to knock one another
off front pages in rapid sequence. So it seems an eternity ago when
in late February, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan went off on
newspaper columnists.
He accused scribes of focusing on the negative, of even driving down
the Istanbul Stock Exchange. He demanded that newspaper owners fire
columnists straying outside the narrow band of his approval.
The tirade hardly came as a surprise. Politicians everywhere, even
in democracies, often take pains to manage the press and the ability
to do so is a skill in demand everywhere. France's Nicolas Sarkozy
is hardly fond of the media. Italy's Silvio Berlusconi is even less
so, which he has remedied by buying large sections of it. America's
politicians are among those quick to blame the press. This past week,
Barack Obama lamented criticism over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It
is in the nature of the political and journalist classes to clash.
But Erdogan's government has made complaints about the media a near
obsession. No need to go into the recent record here, a history that
includes boycott efforts, cancelled accreditations and the draconian
tax fine against our corporate parent.
As Anthony Mills, press freedom manager for the Vienna-based
International Press Institute, put it after Erdogan's latest outburst:
"Although this is not the first time the prime minister has criticized
the media, the comments he made are extremely worrying. Because what he
seems to be suggesting, if I understand correctly, is that newspapers
get rid of columnists who overstep boundaries that are defined by him."
It was after this latest outburst that we decided it was time to
establish a bit of context. On the one hand, Turkey has a very robust
and lively news media. What other European city has more than 30
dailies? They range from the xenophobic to the nationalist to the
Marxist to the libertarian, not to mention the ethnic dailies that
include the established Armenian, Greek and Jewish press as well as the
emergent Kurdish-language media. On the other hand, a gutsy press that
is willing to challenge the powers that be is hardly new to Turkey. The
tumultuous history of Turkish newspapers is almost two centuries old
and the news media of a contemporary standard dates to the early 1950s.
Since that February outburst, reporters Ozgur Ogret and Mustafa Akyol,
along with editor Stefan Martens, have been hard at work on what you
will read this week. As you will see, it is a diverse, complex and
many-faceted portrait. But the leitmotif in this long-running media
symphony is struggle. It has never been easy. It is not so today. But
Turkish journalists are, as our series title suggests, undaunted and
still "pressing for freedom."
From: A. Papazian