A MEDIA PANORAMA: ANALYSIS OF THE MESSAGES PUBLISHED BY THE JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION OF TURKEY IN TERMS OF “PRESS FREEDOM”

Abstract

Turkish Journalists Association (TGC) is Turkey's largest professional media organization. As of November 2022, there are 3 thousand 780 permanent members. In order to become a member of the Association, it is required to working under a contract in the written and visual media, subject to the Press Labor Law No. 5953 (commonly known as the Law No.212), to have a press card and to have at least 2 years of professional experience. It is seen that TGC is particularly sensitive to the issue of freedom of the press, not only protecting the professional and personal rights of its member journalists, but also focusing on the general problems of the media and holding press statements, conferences, panels, demonstrations, etc. in this direction. In recent years, the Association has been making public its objections, reservations and criticisms about freedom of the press through press statements (messages) at almost every opportunity. These press releases are published both on the Association's website and shared via social media and e-mail. In this study, it has been tried to determine which topics, words/concepts and to what extent the freedom of the press matters in 155 press releases/messages published by TGC between January 1, 2022 and November 1, 2022, by analyzing content and discourse. Thus, a panorama of the main problems faced by the media in Turkey in recent years has been drawn through the messages of the largest professional organization of the press.