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Brave government or brave media? | Abdülhamit Bilici | Today's Zaman

Not only is it very important, it is also a virtue for a state to see the error of its ways and question its mistakes. However it is not easy to do this without causing major displeasure.

Therefore, in democratic societies the media is expected to take the lead in changing gangrenous policies and outdated viewpoints.

Of course the media is affected by official policy in every nation; they will cover issues, but will avoid becoming fully immersed in them. The media also reflects viewpoints that fall outside official opinion, bringing out the human factor that the cold official discourse ignores. But with the exception of the Taraf daily, which has broken taboos with its bold stance despite being a fairly new daily, the extent to which we as the Turkish media have been able to fulfill our duty to question is highly debatable.

Even when criticizing policies, a large segment of the Turkish media cannot break away from official theses. Wasn’t the Kardak crisis, which brought Turkey and Greece to the brink of war, an example of the peak of understanding of this kind of journalism? Had the government and to a certain extent the state not adopted a stance in favor of finding a solution in Cyprus in 2003, how much would the media have been able to change the official discourse on that matter?

As part of the Armenian initiative, interesting research was conducted analyzing the Turkish media perspective on this issue. The study, which was conducted by the Global Political Trends Center (GPoT), addressed stories on the matter that were printed in the Zaman, Hürriyet, Radikal, Sabah and Yeni Şafak dailies between 2006 and 2009. The most profound finding was that the media had a strong connection to the official line of thinking.

The sources for more than 60 percent of stories printed during that period were official figures, such as the president, prime minister, foreign minister and diplomats. The rate of stories mixed with opinion was 62 percent. The main issues in news stories, which barely mentioned economic issues, were security and diplomacy. The other striking point is that research conducted on the Armenian media found similar results.

The situation was no different in the meeting that the Medialog Platform, which is affiliated with the Journalists and Writers Foundation, organized to bring together Turkish journalist and Iraqi Kurdish journalists in İstanbul. A study of the stories printed in the aforementioned five newspapers since the 1990s revealed that the fear of division and terrorism was the main factor that determined the perspective on the region. Stories that had a predominantly security-focused tone also lacked a humanitarian factor. Most stories had an approach that looked down on the local people and leaders and occasionally denigrated them. Some ambitious journalists even went a step ahead of the state and security forces and started writing about the prospect of war in their headlines. The effect of this outlook can also be observed in the way the media refers to the new structure developing in the region. Even though it is included in the Iraqi Constitution, the media is adamant about not using the term Kurdistan Regional Administration. Even though Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has made an official visit to Arbil and a decision has been made to open a Turkish consulate in the area, the media is persistent in not changing its habits. Some journalists prefer to refer to the region as northern Iraq, which has become a widely used term. Others call it “the North of Iraq.” Even though the government has launched this initiative, the media still can’t change its stance. The new formula that has been discovered is to say “regional administration.”

It is possible to observe the same attitude in stories about Davutoğlu’s meeting with Massoud Barzani, the leader of the administration, whose name the media is reluctant to mention. “Noting that that they shared a common vision with Massoud Barzani, the leader of the regional administration in northern Iraq, Foreign Minister Davutoğlu said the time has come to take courageous steps and for Arabs, Kurds and Turks to rebuild the Middle East together.” A state minister is talking about working together to rebuild the region and taking bold steps. But as the media, it seems as though we still favor the status quo over change. The words of visiting journalists show that the region’s view of Turkey has changed for the better. Even though there are some worries about whether the initiative process and democratization efforts -- which the journalists are following closely -- will be able to attain their goals, it is obvious that they want to trust Turkey and be closer to it.

Whether they as the Kurdish media conduct self-criticism is their business. But we as the Turkish media definitely need to question if and how ready we are for the shell breaking and new language-creating effort Turkey has started both inside and outside the country.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/columnists-199441-brave-government-or-brave-media.html