Self-regulation in media: How can it be done?
Journalists, academics and representatives of the Press Council and RTÜK seek answer to this question in a EU-UNESCO backed project
30.10.2017
Journalists, representatives from the Press Council and the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), and academics gathered in a roundtable meeting on October 27 to discuss ways to “Promoting Media Self-Regulation in Turkey.”
Participants of the meeting, held at the Adahan Istanbul Hotel as part of a project supported by the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), discussed the existing self-regulation mechanisms in Turkey and their effectiveness and recommendations for a more effective self-regulation regime.
The meeting, hosted and moderated by the Punto 24 Platform for Independent Journalism (P24), brought together the following speakers:
Vice-President of the Press Council Murat Önok, RTÜK member İsmet Demirdöğen, P24 President Hasan Cemal, online verification platform teyit.org founder Mehmet Atakan Foça, Kadir Has University lecturer and the Journalists’ Union of Turkey (TGS) Academy coordinator Sarphan Uzunoğlu, Professor Aslı Tunç of Bilgi University, Associate Professor Ceren Sözeri of Galatasaray University, Evrensel daily Editor-in-Chief Fatih Polat, T24 news portal Editor-in-Chief Doğan Akın, Milliyet daily ombudsperson and coordinator at the Ethics Committee of the Turkish Journalists’ Association (TGC) Belma Akçura, documentary maker, journalist and writer Ümit Kıvanç, journalist Tuğba Tekerek, Artı Gerçek news portal columnist Mehveş Evin and Head of Civil Society, Fundamental Rights, Judiciary and Home Affairs Section at the Delegation of the European Union to Turkey Michael Alexander Rupp.
The roundtable discussion focused on the current state of media self-regulation in Turkey in the light of examples from around the world, with a special emphasis on the structure and the functioning of the Press Council; regulation/self-regulation in radio and television and the RTÜK model; and the role and functioning of the ombudsman mechanism in the media self-regulation. The participants also sought answers to questions on how self-regulation can work in Internet media and how technology can be used to strengthen self-regulation in the age of “new media.”
The participants also brought up the issues of freedom of expression, censorship and self-censorship in the Turkish media, polarization in the media, propaganda in the news, the media economy and union membership among media workers, shedding light on how they each affect the process of self-regulation.
The “Promoting Media Self-Regulation in Turkey” project, implemented by P24, aims to lead an in-depth research on the current state of self-regulation in the Turkish media and eventually offer a road-map for future efforts to strengthen self-regulation.
The results of the research will be published in a book that will be printed in both Turkish and English. Discussions at the roundtable meeting on October 27 have already drafted a general framework for the content and the methodology of the forthcoming book.
The project, which is planned to be completed by June 2018, will be concluded with a conference to discuss findings and recommendations of the book.
The project is a part of a three-year “Building Trust in Media in South East Europe and Turkey” – an EU and UNESCO funded project underway in seven countries.