Etiket media major

When Journalists Get Too Cozy with the Drug Industry

Aslı TUNÇ In the midst of the swine flu epidemic caused by H1N1 influenza virus, Novartis, a Swiss-based pharmaceutical company, invited a coterie of Turkish journalists to South Africa. The journalists from the dailies, Hürriyet, Radikal and Zaman enjoyed the “hospitality” of the drug company for three days in November. As ordinary readers we learned afterwards that Novartis had briefed them about the company’s “medical breakthroughs” in vaccination of malaria and tried to promote its products, activities and services in Africa. During the journalists’ trip to South Africa, not a single reporter or columnist asked a question on the company’s vaccination policies on swine flu or even mentioned the major pandemic hitting the world and Turkey. The Turkish journalists only indicated in their newspapers that they learned a lot about Novartis’s successes around the world and they got very impressed by the company’s activities. When asked on several TV channels, they declined to answer the question about who paid the expenses of the trip. This gave me a strong impression that this had been an all-expenses-paid trip. Also it made me wonder how many of the journalists in this country would have the courage and integrity to say no to those trips in the future.It is not surprising that pharmaceutical companies work really hard to get their message out to the public and physicians through advertisements. However, there are also well-known ethical guidelines on journalistic integrity and independence when it comes to expenses-paid trips unless they are the only way to cover a significant event. For instance, in BBC editorial guidelines, it indicates that journalists should avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived, remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility and refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, […]

Sad ironies of our lives

Media Major Who would have thought that Doğan Media Group (DMG) which was an easy target for criticism because of their poor standards of journalism, lack of professional ethics, close links with the political establishment and their anti-union attitude for years would turn into a defender of press freedom? Well, we, as Turkish citizens can conveniently adjust ourselves to all shifting roles, changing perceptions and positions in this country. So it should not be that much difficult for us to turn the group into a democracy advocate and a victim of freedom of expression. This must be nothing else but just another sad irony of our lives. Everything started with a colossal tax fine last week. DMG was penalized to pay 826.3 million Turkish Liras ($ 490 million) with an alleged overdue payment in connection with sales of its assets to a German media group, Axel Springer to avoid taxation. In fact we should have seen it was coming. It was common knowledge that accountants and tax officers were auditing the financial records of the group for the last 10 months. They were literally camping in the fancy highrise buildings of Hürriyet and Milliyet newspapers. The government officers were obviously assigned to dig in and find out any kind of financial wrongdoing. After the Prime Minister’s call for boycotting the DMG newspapers and his escalated verbal attacks on the group, there came an effective tool to mute the voice of opposition, tax fine. Actually this is not a new method in Turkey. Adnan Menderes, the former Prime Minister of Democratic Party in the 19’/50s, was known as the master of using state apparatus to silence the media. At the time he had sent his tax officers to the opponent newspapers and imposed unprecedented amounts of tax. DMG, with its 25 […]