Out to Lunch

We all know what we would think of a restaurant that was closed between 12.00-14.00 with a sign  “Out to Lunch.” But what are we to make of  a meeting between the Turkish prime minister and two dozen senior editors and media executives that was advertised as “Closed to the Press?”
 
 It  is far more than just a bad joke.
 
It is a sign that there is now an inner circle of news organisations that are so close to the government that they have lost the memory of what it means to be independent. It is a section of  the media which the American academic Henri J. Barkey referred to in a recent article as “Pravda on steroids” – a loyal praetorian guard that protects the government’s interests with such relentless vigour that it edges the rest of us towards anti-depressants.
 
We must assume– we cannot know–   this was a meeting in which the prime minister and his team set out their strategy for the coming presidential election. We must assume as well that they were not so much informing the press of the their plan and as lining up their cooperation. We cannot know for sure because the meeting it took place in a room closed not to the press but to the real press Turkey needs.
 
Even so, you would think that having so many senior media figures in a room with  the prime minister that, no matter how much the meeting was deep-background-off-the-record, hush-hush that something would leak out.
 
Well, we do know is that the meeting took place on Sunday 6 April at the palatial former royal residence on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. It was Prime Minister’s first briefing to (what to call it!) the “non-press press” since his party’s electoral victory the previous week. We also know a great deal about what was on the menu since the editor of Sabah newspaper wrote about it in great detail. There was broccoli soup, “a pat of butter no bigger than a sugar cube,” a tablespoon worth of cheese, two mini artichokes  – all items on a long and varied list of victuals. There was also roast lamb, but the editor is a strict vegetarian and on principle was forced to say “no.”
 
Would that he had the principle to decline to attend the event altogether in solidarity with his fellow newspapers who were deliberately excluded from the event. Sometimes it is best to eat your nut cutlets at home. 
 
All governments try to spin the news. No prime minister anywhere wants a press corps looking over his (or her) shoulder. All ministers have their favourite reporters and editors whom they use to get their side of the story across.  At the same time, it is simply not acceptable in a democratic society for a government to devote resources to cultivating a press that does its bidding and ignore or vilify those who don’t.
 
 
A free press should hold its government accountable, not wait for scraps from the government’s table.