If Yeni Şafak’s goal were journalism...

Yeni Şafak’s campaign against Abdullah Yaman, President of the 11th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation, began with the report: "Altınbaş corruption in a multi-million project: They are acting like FETÖ representatives." This report on October 23 was followed two days later by the headline: "FETÖ shadow at the Court of Cassation."

Yeni Şafak alleged that Abdullah Yaman acted with bias and abused his authority to influence the case in a lawsuit filed 17 years ago by a businessman named Kâmil Darbaz, who claimed his partner had sold a multi-million-lira plot of land without his knowledge.

Responding with a statement titled "The Yeni Şafak Gang," Yaman challenged them, saying, "The sole reason they are attempting to smear me is that I did not allow their unjust demands." However, Yeni Şafak published two more reports on October 26 and October 28 without including Yaman’s response.

Interestingly, neither the Minister of Justice nor the President of the Court of Cassation issued a statement; they remained completely silent. Unexpectedly, Yeni Akit’s chief columnist Ali İhsan Karahasanoğlu defended Yaman in an article titled "Here is an exemplary high judge who can say 'Bring it on'," referring to Yeni Şafak as a "publishing group with a conservative line" without naming them directly.

However, Karahasanoğlu’s intervention was not enough to stop Yeni Şafak. They continued with reports on October 29 titled "Stop the insults, look at the file" and on October 30 titled "Joint property cannot be sold without notice."

Yaman issued another statement, characterizing Yeni Şafak as a "semi-official Al-Ahram" and an "obese gang that has attained everything worldly but has forgotten concepts like morality, ethics, dignity, and religion in its past shanty-town origins." Yeni Şafak, in turn, called for Yaman’s resignation.

Yeni Şafak’s seven "exclusive" reports, none of which carry a reporter’s byline, appear as if they were written by lawyers. If a journalist had written them, journalistic standards would have been followed, both sides' views would have been included, and Yaman’s right to reply would have been respected.

Instead, this is clearly a one-sided attack that includes insults. The Court of Cassation judge is being branded a "FETÖ member" and accused with unsubstantiated claims; there is clear pressure being exerted on the judiciary.

Moreover, Yeni Şafak’s interference in this case is not new. In 2017, a report titled "Terror investigation into land seizure" was published regarding this same case. In that report, Kâmil Darbaz had also accused other individuals of influencing the case, asking, "Are there still FETÖ members protecting these men within the state?"

What has happened over the years that led Yeni Şafak to take such ownership of a businessman’s land dispute and attempt to pressure the judiciary through it? Are commercial interests involved, or is there another reason related to this specific chamber at the Court of Cassation? We do not know the answers to these questions.

What we do know is that Yeni Şafak has previously published reports in favor of its owner, the Albayrak Group, and has used journalism as a tool for corporate interests. For example, Yeni Şafak had also targeted an expert witness in a case filed by the Albayrak-Öztaş partnership against TOKİ with a report titled "Expert or gang?"

TURHAN ÇÖMEZ AND THE JOURNALIST’S LABOR

Sözcü’s report, "Photo of that spy with AKP members in London has emerged," stated that "İYİ Party’s Turhan Çömez shared a photo of Hüseyin Gün, whose arrest led to İmamoğlu’s 'espionage' allegation, taken with AKP members."

However, in a report published the same day, October 30, in Cumhuriyet, it was stated that this photo was uncovered by Bahadır Özgür from Halk TV. That was the truth.

Bahadır Özgür had included that photo, taken in London in 2010, in his article titled "The person accused of espionage explains: He organized a meeting in London with AKP ministers," published on halktv.com.tr on October 28 at 15:45. Halk TV had also shared the news on X at 16:04.

Turhan Çömez shared the news and the photo regarding the London meeting on his social media account about two hours later. However, he did not cite his source in his post.

In fact, Sözcü should have realized that the source of the news and the photo was Bahadır Özgür. For two days, it had been used by many news sites, newspapers, and TV channels with proper attribution.

Sözcü’s attitude is one of carelessness, but Turhan Çömez’s is blatant plagiarism. It is an ethically problematic behavior. Bahadır Özgür is right to react and say, "It would be better if opposition MPs did not hijack the labor of journalists." As a journalist, his only wish is for his work to be acknowledged...

THE ERROR IN EUROFIGHTER REPORTS

It was announced that Turkey will purchase 20 new Eurofighter Typhoon jets from the UK. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Erdoğan signed the agreement.

However, the Anadolu Agency report, "President Erdoğan and British Prime Minister Starmer signed the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet cooperation agreement," contained no information regarding the cost of the agreement to Turkey. Similarly, the pro-government media, including BloombergHT, Habertürk, Haber7, Hürriyet, Milliyet, NTV, TRT Haber, TGRT Haber, and Yeni Şafak, did not provide detailed information about the cost and content of the agreement.

The pro-government media, including AA, Hürriyet, TRT Haber, and Milliyet, only reported a day later in articles titled "The Eurofighter Typhoon agreement between Turkey and the UK received wide coverage in the European press" that the cost of the agreement was 8 billion pounds (10.7 billion dollars), citing Corriere della Sera, BBC, Guardian, and Le Figaro.

For the cost of the jets to be clearly written and featured in headlines in the pro-government media, the Ministry of National Defense had to make a statement four days later. Unlike the European media, the Ministry of National Defense announced the cost as 5.4 billion pounds.

Of course, defense correspondents did not write about the reason for this discrepancy. Yet, a report on an agreement should not be limited to relaying ceremonial speeches; information such as the content and cost of the agreement should also be included.

Indeed, Akşam, one of the newspapers that did not report the cost of the jets in the Eurofighter news, used the headline "3.1 billion euro approval" when it came to the sale of 45 Hürjets to Spain. If the cost were not important, it would not have been featured in the headline of that report. Incomplete news is incorrect news.

DIVERGENCE IN CHANCELLOR MERZ REPORTS

The pro-government media and the opposition media also diverged in their reporting on the joint press conference between German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and President Tayyip Erdoğan.

Newspapers such as Akşam, Hürriyet, Sabah, Türkgün, Yeni Akit, and Yeni Şafak featured in their headlines Erdoğan’s criticism directed at Germany, referring to the atrocities Israel is committing in Gaza: "Do you, as Germany, not see these?"

However, while these newspapers did not report at all on the criticism Merz directed at Turkey regarding the arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu, Hürriyet mentioned it in passing between the lines. Türkiye newspaper, differently, highlighted Erdoğan’s words on this subject, but it also did not publish Merz’s criticism.

Opposition newspapers such as Cumhuriyet, Sözcü, and Karar based their reports on the sentence Merz used while answering a question about İmamoğlu’s arrest: "Decisions have been taken in Turkey that do not yet sufficiently meet the standards of a state of law and democracy." While Cumhuriyet did not include Erdoğan’s outburst against Germany regarding Gaza in its report, Sözcü and Karar did include Erdoğan’s words on this subject in their reports.

Nefes, which diverged from the opposition media, prioritized Gaza as the pro-government media did and did not report on the İmamoğlu issue. BirGün did not see Merz’s criticism at all; it reported Erdoğan’s answer to the İmamoğlu question but did not include his criticism regarding Gaza in the report.

It is a major error for the pro-government media not to report Merz’s criticism and for the opposition media not to report Erdoğan’s criticism. What to feature in headlines is an editorial choice, but the main elements of both leaders' statements should have been provided in full. This is exactly what objectivity in news is: presenting what happened fully and accurately. A headline may reflect your side, but the news must be objective.

NATIONAL DIGITAL MEMORY CENTER

The sudden deletion of videos from Tele1’s YouTube account following the appointment of a trustee through extrajudicial punishment, and then the complete closure of the account, worried us journalists.

However, it was later understood that the YouTube account was not closed by the trustee appointed by the TMSF, but temporarily by the Tele1 team to protect it against the trustee’s intervention. The YouTube account, which remained outside the trustee’s sphere of influence because it was under a different company, was later reopened.

But these events reminded us that news, articles, photos, and videos produced with so much labor and effort can disappear in an instant. Because we have seen it before; the digital archives of media organizations that have closed, been shut down, changed owners, or had trustees appointed can be deleted, and our collective memory can be destroyed. This happened at CNN Türk, Flash Haber, TV8, and Radikal.

It is imperative that we develop new methods to ensure digital archives are not left to anyone’s mercy. The "Journalism Rights and Freedoms Declaration," published after a workshop organized last year in Ankara by the "Media Solidarity Group" consisting of 12 professional organizations, proposed the establishment of a "National Digital Memory Center" to ensure that all journalistic products in the digital environment are passed on to future generations. It was also requested that banned or access-blocked journalistic products be stored in a special section and be accessible only to researchers, lawyers, and journalists.

Indeed, just as printed newspapers and magazines are stored in the National Library, it is necessary to establish a center that will protect digital data. This is the only way we can protect our national digital memory against political conditions, technology, and changes in ownership.

ARE COMMUNICATION FACULTIES NOT ENOUGH?

The AKP-run Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality has decided to train "journalists of the future." In the "Journalism and New Media School," young people will be taught "basic journalism, digital reporting in new media, TV reporting, correspondence and editing, and news anchoring."

Esra Toptaş (Türkiye), Fatih Selek (Türkiye), Türker Akıncı (Beyaz TV), Niyazi Dölek (TRT), Onur Barış (Documentary filmmaker), and Fulya Soybaş (Hürriyet) will teach young people at this school.

In the opposition media, it was highlighted that the municipality spent 2.4 million liras for this "school" and that "acceptable journalists" would be trained. But I also wondered why a municipality feels the need to train journalists. First and foremost, training journalists cannot be a municipal activity.

You would think that the young people graduating from the 69 existing communication faculties are not enough to fill the vacant positions in the media, so the municipality is coming to the rescue of the sector! That is not the case. Thousands of young people graduating from faculties every year cannot find jobs; hundreds of experienced journalists are unemployed.

How good it would be if everyone focused on their own job...

In a single sentence:

The pro-government media did not report on the armed fight that broke out due to an inheritance dispute in the Menzil sect, which left four people injured, nor did they report on the fire that broke out in a hospital belonging to the sect.

In Tunceli, journalist Hıdır Yıldız, who filmed the police intervention against young people protesting those making the "grey wolf" sign during the Republic Day celebrations, was detained.

Akşam published a full-page promotion for the AKP-run Kayseri Metropolitan Municipality, and Yeni Şafak did the same for the AKP-run Ümraniye Municipality, without adding a "This is an advertisement" warning.

In Solcu Gazete’s report, "The driver who hit a truck from behind on the Northern Marmara Motorway died in a horrific way," the description "in a horrific way" was an exaggerated narrative. (Nihat Pehlivan)

On CNN Türk, while the names of those attending the October 29 reception were being read, Turgut Özal Foundation President Semih Narlı was confused with the Motherland Party Chairman (İbrahim Çelebi).

The press conference of Minister of Culture and Tourism M. Nuri Ersoy was broadcast live by A Haber, Akit TV, Bengütürk, CNN Türk, Flash Haber, Habertürk, NTV, TRT Haber, TVNET, TV100, Ulusal TV, Ülke TV, and 24 TV.

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