Erdoğan, speaking at his party’s weekly parliamentary group meeting yesterday, said his earlier criticism of media bosses for not controlling their columnists was misunderstood. “If so many people are making so many different assumptions about what I meant, that must mean that I failed to express myself,” Erdoğan said. He said his statement last week addressed media bosses, not columnists. “I am not telling them to ‘fire this or that writer because I don’t like him or her’,” he said.
He said media bosses visited him at times and he always gave them the message that the government does not want “tension” or “fights.” Erdoğan said stability helped the country stay on course and that is why he always requests the help of the media to reduce tension.
Erdoğan said he always told newspaper or television owners to complain not to him, but to their own editors-in-chief, channel administrators or columnists, who tend to exaggerate even the slightest negativity and present every incident as a “shocking” or “shattering” development, attempting to instill pessimism in the nation. “When I say those things, they tell me I am right, but they say they can’t make them listen. If I don’t like a certain columnist, newspaper, television channel or a TV host, then I won’t watch it and that’s the end of it. I am not naming any names.”
He said he was only saying that there were newspapers adhering to an editorial policy hostile to the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) as if “we are political competitors.” He said it was his natural right to call for a boycott of such publications. “But a media boss does not have the right to complain about a columnist or a TV host from his own institutions in the way you and I do. … They can’t say, ‘I do not want tension, but I cannot prevent publications that fan tension.’ They choose their staff. They decide the publication policy.” He said a shopkeeper who did not work properly at a store would be fired the next day and that the same should apply in the media world.
He said he has never told any media boss to fire a particular columnist. “But don’t come to me complaining,” he said, addressing the media bosses he was criticizing. “It is your own store, do as you like. It is your choice.”
