Taraf and AKP promises
Taraf and AKP promises
It is one of the journalism principles to follow the allegations made in a report. However, like other Turkish press Taraf newspaper fails to follow this principle.
While Taraf is publishing countless reports in support of AKP government, it does not find it necessary to search whether the promises made by the Turkish government officials through their reports have been fulfilled. Thus, Taraf does not seem to be playing the main actor role which journalists should. It also brings the questions in our minds: Is Taraf doing news journalism or fairy tale journalism?
On 15 March 2009, shortly after local elections Taraf published a report: “Slogan Cleaning in the Mountains” by Erdem Gül. In the report it was underlined that AKP’s election promises like “New legislation for restoring the Kurdish geographical names, cleaning the slogans like ‘How happy he is who calls himself a Turk’ from the mountains of the Southeast.” This proverb by Mustafa Kemal is written on every single mountain, in every single city in Kurdish cities.
When AKP ‘staff’ made these promises, they were remarkable at the time and were giving hopes to that they will be realised.
And Taraf who released these promises on behalf of AKP officials has never followed the promises and failed to obey journalism principals. Such reports of Taraf mean AKP propaganda rather than reporting information. Taraf is serving AKP by never following these promises or by not informing the public opinion that AKP has failed to fulfil its commitments. AKP did not take any steps and the “racist slogans’ are still in the Kurdish mountains and Taraf does not write about them.
Informing Taraf which even does not bother to follow the allegations/promises by AKP officials, the slogans have not been deleted from the Kurdish mountains, on the contrary in Uludere district of Sirnak even new ones are being written.
While Taraf is publishing countless reports in support of AKP government, it does not find it necessary to search whether the promises made by the Turkish government officials through their reports have been fulfilled. Thus, Taraf does not seem to be playing the main actor role which journalists should. It also brings the questions in our minds: Is Taraf doing news journalism or fairy tale journalism?
On 15 March 2009, shortly after local elections Taraf published a report: “Slogan Cleaning in the Mountains” by Erdem Gül. In the report it was underlined that AKP’s election promises like “New legislation for restoring the Kurdish geographical names, cleaning the slogans like ‘How happy he is who calls himself a Turk’ from the mountains of the Southeast.” This proverb by Mustafa Kemal is written on every single mountain, in every single city in Kurdish cities.
When AKP ‘staff’ made these promises, they were remarkable at the time and were giving hopes to that they will be realised.
And Taraf who released these promises on behalf of AKP officials has never followed the promises and failed to obey journalism principals. Such reports of Taraf mean AKP propaganda rather than reporting information. Taraf is serving AKP by never following these promises or by not informing the public opinion that AKP has failed to fulfil its commitments. AKP did not take any steps and the “racist slogans’ are still in the Kurdish mountains and Taraf does not write about them.
Informing Taraf which even does not bother to follow the allegations/promises by AKP officials, the slogans have not been deleted from the Kurdish mountains, on the contrary in Uludere district of Sirnak even new ones are being written.
