Reporting Of Settlement Process In Turkish Press

Abstract

The initiatives for the solution of the terror problem ongoing for many years in Turkey, has attracted significant media interest. It was observed that media was not unconcerned with the developments in the settlement process and they made news about the subject with different perspectives. That situation puts forward the media’s efforts to dominate especially over the developments related to national matters. In this process, the attitude of the media is determined by economical, political and ideological factors. So much that, the news contents of different newspapers about the same subjects related to the settlement process differentiated and their news texts had ideological signs. That status shows that; ideological positions of the media organizations are effective on the process of news formation. In this study, it has been attempted to put forward how an attitude was adapted by the newspapers towards the developments in the process. In this direction, the newspapers of Yeni Şafak, Cumhuriyet, Habertürk, Radikal, Evrensel and Zaman; which are assumed to have different ideologically positions, has been examined in the context of the study. Among the news involving settlement process, the articles on the front pages of newspapers (headlines, subheadings and other news on the front page) have been examined in terms of biasness, and the media have been found to present a biased viewpoint contrary to the objectivity principles. The study, which is based on qualitative and quantitative content analysis, has revealed that; the news, which deal with the settlement process, were formatted according to a biased perspective, in terms of the language used; words and news sources selected.