Etiket media

A newspaper giveaway at the most unlikely spot

Asli Tunc When I pulled over to the nearest gas station in my neighborhood, a pump attendant approached and asked me which newspaper I would like to have — Milliyet or Radikal? While I was mumbling something in astonishment, he had already dropped a copy of free Milliyet in the back seat of my car and returned to his pumping job. No wonder I was being pampered by Doğan Media Group newspapers, since the same media conglomerate had shares in this particular oil company (PO) along with an Austrian energy giant, OMV. I could not help myself but think how two well-known and respected editors-in-chief of those dailies, İsmet Berkan and Sedat Ergin would feel about that. Milliyet and Radikal are not trashy papers like many others in the country. There are considerably good and experienced reporters and columnists who have been worked in the past and are still working for those newspapers. But treating their newspapers like freebies in a gas station must be humiliating for those editors and self-respected journalists. Or have I just been too naive? Milliyet has a daily circulation of 195 thousand and Radikal is suffering for quite sometime with a modest circulation of 38 thousand. Nevertheless those two newspapers are targeted to an educated, urban, middle class, liberal minded elite obviously with an additional feature of being a car owner. “What a weird world,” I thought. Between 1988-1996, the Turkish newspapers were in a giveaway frenzy, running promotional campaigns, offering free stuff on a wide scale varying from cookwares to a small size aircraft and a BMW. I still vividly remember waiting in line for hours to get a crappy make-up set for my mother after collecting dozens of coupons or a China made luggage that we would never use. Everybody was buying newspapers […]

A Mediterranean’s impressions of Helsinki

Aslı TUNÇ Leaving 22 degrees of lovely spring weather back home in Istanbul, I was on a plane with dozens of extremely silent Finnish passengers heading up North to Helsinki. As an experienced traveler, I had already read Finnish history, culture and about five must-see places in the city (such as Uspenski Cathedral, National Museum, the Opera House, Design District, etc.). Approaching the airport, the first sight was bulks of ice melting in the Gulf of Finland. It was a sign that I should better forget the meaning of “spring” in Mediterranean terms for a week. Although my aim was to give seminars at the University of Helsinki, I also had a chance to observe everyday life and culture in Finland and the media scene in the country. Many things I experienced are not written in any travel books or blogs. And I believe that is precisely the most refreshing part of traveling. When I stepped on the Finnish soil, I had a connection problem on my Blackberry. Although it was annoying not to be able to call anybody in Turkey, I did not mind that much, since I was in the “Nokia Land” where all the communication problems could be solved easily. Well, at least so I though. As soon as I arrived at the center, I entered the Central Railway Station, a landmark of the city with a unique clock tower and the two pairs of statues holding the spherical lamps on either side of the main entrance. I was hundred percent sure that I would find a public phone in this busiest location or an international calling card like in any other European city. When I asked the man at the kiosk, he said with a smile that they don’t use public phones anymore. They assume that […]

Which Generation Will Stop Reading Newspapers? X, Y, or Z?

Aslı TUNÇ In the beginning of every academic year, I ask my students where they get their news from and how many of them actually buy a newspaper. In the last eight years of my teaching at Bilgi, fewer and fewer hands rise for purchasing of newspapers and more hands for the online news sources. I take this as a definite sign of my aging. I should better accept the fact that the generation gap exists and that reality is hard for me to absorb. I am from a generation where I need to begin the day with a hard copy of a newspaper on my door mat although this does not prevent me to read a bunch of other sources and newspapers online. While I was reading the Pew Research Center’s 2008 news media consumption survey a few days ago, I came across the recent data on how American youngsters turn to the Internet for their news. Fewer young people are reading print newspapers while the percentage of college students who read newspapers online is growing rapidly. The report indicates the balance between online and print readership changed substantially between 2006 and 2008. Actually the most interesting analysis was about the generation gap. 21% of “Generation X” (born between 1965 and 1976) read only a print newspaper, or both an online and a print newspaper; 18 % read a newspaper only on the Web, or both online and in print. In 2006, 30 % of Gen X read a newspaper in print, while just 13 % read a web version. So there is a sharp decline in readership of print newspapers in the last two years. How about Generation Y (born 1977 or later)? In 2008, nearly equal percentages in Generation Y (born 1977 or later) read a newspaper […]

What is New About HABERTURK?

Asli Tunc First a television channel then an Internet site and now a daily newspaper with exactly the same name —HABERTURK — came into our lives on March 1. The insistence on this overused title for a new brand seemed to be puzzling for many people but despite the confusion, HABERTURK (HT) daily claimed to be different than the rest of the newspapers in the market. The advertising campaigns mainly focused on its unique format and printing quality. The owner, Ciner Group, was welcome as a competitor to Dogan Media Group since the latter obviously represented the concentration in the media market in Turkey. However, the choice for the editor-in-chief position should have been the first wake-up call for the ones who had high hopes for this new daily. Fatih Altaylı is quite a well known figure in the Turkish media circle. He has a reputation for his aggressive style of expressing himself and also he can easily be defined as a defender of machismo in addition to his sexist and militarist discourse in the Turkish media. To give you an idea, two recent incidents immediately come to my mind: On March 2002, on a panel he mentioned about a female human rights lawyer by saying “I should be damned if I do not sexually harrass her at the moment I see her.” His other comments were rather more unpalatable. Writing in his column at the HABERTURK website, Altayli, apparently furious about a female columnist, Gülay Göktürk’s observations about the Turkish military at a TV show, declared incongruously, “Miss, perhaps you are not aware but that army is protecting you between your legs too!” I suppose no more quotations are needed to illustrate the style of Altayli.. So let’s move on. With Fatih Altaylı in charge, HT came in big […]

A nation that loves to hate

Asli Tunc The presenter on a popular Turkish TV was trying to hide her feelings while reporting the crash of the Turkish Airlines plane in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago. Allegedly the Dutch emergency crew intentionally had not come to the rescue of the pilots and wounded passengers and kept them waiting for 45 minutes in the middle of the muddy fields near Schiphol Airport. How could they do such a thing? It must have been because we were Turks, wasn’t it? “Turks have no friends but themselves” is a popular saying that most of us believe in. But lately this general belief among the Turkish society became more and more visible in news reporting. The “us vs. them” dichotomy started to lead us to a rather concerning ethnocentric view of the world. We feel more isolated on the global arena, being paranoid at times blaiming the non-Turks for every single bad incident. This feeling might be explained both with the rising nationalist sentiment and also with frustration because Turks believe they have been treated unfairly in the EU accession process. As a bottom line, Turks do not feel sympathy to any nation. In fact this was double-checked and revealed in a BBC World Service-GlobeScan Poll last month. This global poll is taken in 21 countries annually to learn the public views of each country’s of others. The results indicated that Turkey was the only country where the public views were predominantly negative. According to the results, Turkish public opinion showed great distrust in the US, Canada, all the EU countries, India, Russia, Brasil, Japan, South Africa, and you name it. Well, did it come as a surprise to you? Probably not. Ethnocentrism is defined as the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one’s […]