It may sound curious to most of you, but this particular news story about Ahmet Altan -- bringing the issue of media freedom to Turkey -- was completely ignored by the newspapers and media outlets of the powerful Doğan Group. For days now, there has not been a single line or comment about it (only yesterday, CNNTürk, a Doğan outlet, mentioned it very briefly). The apparent “cover-up” is a symbolic act that exposes the ongoing hypocrisy over press freedom and reveals how selfishly it is perceived and interpreted. It also tells us about the contempt for rivals, born out of ideological fixations. To journalists like Altan -- or the late Hrant Dink, assassinated out in the open -- freedom means a bold exercise: indiscriminative, fearless critical coverage of “sacred” institutions, powerful bureaucracy, majority governments and issues seen as taboos.
For others, press freedom means something different. It is perceived as a path to the abuse of rights in order to serve private ownership interests, turning their backs to corruption and immoral acts if they are somehow related to the political and economic powers with which the ownership has for long formed an unholy alliance. The “give and take” system serves, certainly, the interests of all those involved and turns journalism into a dirty tool for disseminating lies, neglecting realities and distorting stories at the disposal of the powers. And, when the “unholy alliance” no longer works, it is used as a tool for blackmail, for “dethroning” them.
Moreover, once those “privileges” are given to interested media owners, the greed that they develop leads to monopolies and cartels, and a ruthless fight is conducted against big and small rivals in the media. The “unholy alliance” has an interest in working against diversity, and the destruction leads to a domain in which good and free journalism is dead and editorial independence is paralyzed.
This is what happened in Turkey's private media until the beginning of this decade. And this is the background of what has developed between the Doğan Media Group and the government. A legal dispute -- fines up to $2.5 billion for tax evasion -- deserves such a background, although the consequences of the punishment should be of concern to any sensible, independent-minded journalist. Andrew Finkel, a longtime independent observer of the media landscape here, wrote the following yesterday in this paper:
“Mr. Doğan was used to cultivating governments, and in the days of weak coalitions, his support mattered. Many regard the 1995 general election in Turkey as a proxy fight between the Doğan Group and Sabah rather than the parties on the ballot paper. Before entering a (failed) coalition with Tansu Çiller, Mesut Yılmaz went to consult with Doğan and the two remained allies. This in itself was not a crime (Tony Blair paid similar sorts of homage to Rupert Murdoch). However, the Doğan Group was persistently criticized for rendering paper thin the firewall between editorial independence and financial self-interest. Ertuğrul Özkök, the editor of the flagship Hürriyet newspaper, proudly wore two hats -- that of a journalist and that of a member of the board who could happily negotiate incentives from the government for factories his parent company was trying to build.”
Now, the outlets of Doğan Yayın, which symbolically ignored a story on a press freedom award to a colleague under threat, are crying foul, and a lobbying campaign in global centers such as Brussels will be launched on the basis of press freedom under threat. This is nothing more than hypocrisy by a segment of a press corps here, which, to a great deal, served the interests of its owner and became tactically critical or uncritical in their coverage, depending on the interests of the ownership of the entire media group. This hypocrisy will continue as long as this segment of the press, especially those responsible in Doğan's editorial management positions, do a thorough self-criticism of all the “sins” they themselves have committed up until recently.
At the heart of the row is the unfulfilled business and privileged expectations of a media proprietor and a prime minister who wants to take revenge (in the wrong way) for repeated demands from the media proprietor -- based on his old habits with previous powers -- whom the prime minister sees as a constant threat.
On one side stand all those who polluted this profession, and on the other, a government that uses this as a pretext to expand its power.
It is obvious who will suffer the most.
