DOI: 10.5176/2301-3729_JMComm12.32
Authors: Prof.Dr.Füsun Alver, Assoc. Prof. Şebnem Çağlar
Abstract:
Relations between the actors of journalism and political power-holders have always been important and debated in Turkey since the date newspapers began to be published in the Ottoman Empire. In this period of time, the political field and its actors have exerted direct and/or indirect pressure on journalism and tried to control it. While the relations between the fields of journalism and politics were shaped predominantly under the control and pressure of the latter through either legal regulations or arbitrary treatments, journalists also tried to influence and direct the political field depending on the political and social conditions of time. The field of journalism is not always at odds with the field of politics; actors of both fields can sometimes establish relations of mutual interest, and in such periods, problems of objective news production and editorial independence arise.
The following question is becoming more and more important due to the influence and pressure practices of the fields of politics and economy on the field of journalism: To what extent are newspaper editors independent and to what extent do they take their news-production decisions according to professional principles of journalism? In this framework, the aim of the study is to examine, with an argumentative method, the historical attempts of politics and economy in Turkey to influence, to exert pressure on and to exercise power over journalism; and the potential of journalism to influence and redirect these fields within the increasingly-complicating web of relations.
Keywords: Journalism, Political Power Holders, Turkey
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