Where were the journalists at the barbecue?

Newspapers stopped boasting about their circulation figures a long time ago. I, too, had forgotten about the circulation issue until I saw the headline “Türkiye is once again the best-selling newspaper” in the Türkiye newspaper.

The Türkiye newspaper announced that its daily sales in July, including subscribers in addition to newsstand sales, were 108 thousand, and declared that it had been in first place for the last four months. Data that the Media Monitoring Center (MTM) stated it received from relevant institutions also confirmed Türkiye's top position.

However, newspaper circulations are falling at a great speed. The Türkiye newspaper had announced its average sales in July as 108 thousand, but its circulation fell to 91 thousand in September. According to MTM, between September 2-8, Türkiye's circulation was 91,655, Sabah's was 89,265, Hürriyet's was 86,702, Sözcü's was 86,566, Akşam's was 78,398, and Milliyet's was 61,045.

However, newspaper circulations do not stop there; they are falling at a great speed. The Türkiye newspaper is in first place again. But these circulation figures are not reliable. The Türkiye newspaper claims to be announcing sales figures, but at the same time, it complains about the “inflated circulations of some others.”

Furthermore, circulations are not verified by independent sources, nor are they clearly declared by the institutions themselves. Actual sales figures may be much lower than these circulation numbers. Moreover, the fact that newspapers like Sabah, Hürriyet, and Milliyet, which once exceeded 1 million per day, are now remaining below 100 thousand confirms the dramatic decline in newspaper sales.

But some clues indicate that circulations are not at the 90 thousand level, but even lower. Consider that Demirören Holding, the owner of Hürriyet, Milliyet, Posta, and Fanatik newspapers, no longer needs a printing house in Istanbul; it closed the Istanbul DPC, the printing facility belonging to Hürriyet Gazetecilik, two years ago. Look around you; there are almost no newsstands left where newspapers are sold; printed publications are now sold in markets at gas stations. It is common knowledge that there are bulk sales made to municipalities and public institutions, as well as free distributions.

The only remaining distribution company, Turkuvaz Dağıtım, also stopped distribution to 146 settlements as of June 1st! They didn't announce this, of course, but I learned about it from the local Kastamonu newspaper's report, “Newspaper distribution to two of our districts has been stopped.” This number has likely increased even further in the four months that have passed.

There is a faster decline in Turkey than in European countries. It is also impossible to attribute the decline in newspaper circulation solely to the development of digital media. The role of poor journalism, which is all similar to one another, does not provide news different from the digital environment, and cannot go beyond being the voice of the government and power centers, is also significant…

A NEWSPAPER THAT PROTECTS THE BOSS'S INTERESTS

Hürriyet's editor-in-chief, Ahmet Hakan, recently wrote an article titled “Agenda: Gambling sites and illegal betting.” Ahmet Hakan's newspaper and his boss may have such an agenda, but the media, in fact, does not have such an agenda beyond mentioning it every now and then.

Ahmet Hakan had devoted his entire column that day to this topic. He was explaining the harms of “virtual gambling and illegal betting” at length. He was complaining, saying, “You have closed the casinos, you do not allow them legally, but who listens to your ban? Gambling sites on the internet are running like clockwork,” and arguing that “a total struggle is essential.”

How important an agenda item illegal gambling and betting sites are for Hürriyet is evident from the fact that news on this subject is used almost every day after Ahmet Hakan's article. The news titled “The three losers of illegal betting and gambling: Economy/society/people” was followed by the news “Warning came from CHP: Illegal betting is a matter of survival” and “Gambling is virtual, the fraud is real,” and Fatih Çekirge's article “Illegal betting and gambling alarm from Yeşilay.”

Ahmet Hakan's article and Hürriyet's news reports are crippled by omissions. It is not written that legal virtual gambling and betting businesses in Turkey are operated by the Demirören Group, which also owns Hürriyet. Milli Piyango, which offers Numerical Games, Scratch Cards, National Lottery, and Virtual Games, as well as Misli.com, which offers “fixed-odds betting games,” Iddaa.com, which offers betting games, and Hipodrom.com, which offers horse racing bets, are all Demirören Group companies. Moreover, according to the Türkiye newspaper, there are also “slot-like games found in casinos,” i.e., gambling games, on Demirören's sites.

By publishing articles and news without mentioning that the existence of illegal gambling and betting sites primarily harms the profits of the Demirören Group, Ahmet Hakan hides the fact that he is protecting his boss's interests; he is deceiving his readers.

Well, while struggling so hard to explain the harms of illegal gambling and betting and how they create addiction in young people, shouldn't one also talk a little bit about the harms of the legal ones?

THEY CONFUSED THE BUILDING ÖZGÜR ÖZEL VISITED

Milliyet and Yeni Şafak mistook the Türkevi building, which CHP Chairman Özgür Özel visited in New York, for the Turken building, in front of which Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu had filmed a video two years ago.

Milliyet Editor-in-Chief Özay Şendir wrote in his article “Özel-type opposition,” “When Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu visited the USA as CHP Chairman, he had filmed a criticism video in front of the Türkevi.” In Yeni Şafak's news titled “He just understood the importance of Türkevi,” it was said, “Kılıçdaroğlu had filmed a video in front of the Türkevi and made the slander, ‘This skyscraper was built with the money his son sent to his daughter.’”

However, the Türkevi is another building belonging to the Republic of Turkey state, where the Consulate General and the Permanent Representation to the UN are located. The building in front of which Kılıçdaroğlu filmed a video, claiming it was used as a front for the Erdoğan family's wealth transfer, is a student dormitory belonging to the Turken Foundation, established in the USA by TÜRGEV and the Ensar Foundation.

Indeed, https://www.veryansintv.com/ozgur-ozelden-turkevi-hakkindaki-rusvet-iddiasina-yanit, A Haber, in its news “Kılıçdaroğlu had done his propaganda: Praise came from Özgür Özel,” and Sabah, in its news “Kılıçdaroğlu's dirty propaganda comes to mind,” emphasized that Türkevi and Turken are two different buildings.

Yeni Şafak corrected the news in its printed newspaper on its webpage, stating that the building Kılıçdaroğlu filmed in front of was the Turken building, but Özay Şendir's article remains exactly the same on the internet.

If Milliyet and Yeni Şafak had carefully followed the news that President Erdoğan continued his contacts in New York at the Türkevi building and then visited the Turken Foundation building for a while, they would not have confused the two buildings.

Furthermore, it was natural for Özgür Özel to be asked about the lawsuit filed against New York Mayor Eric Adams on the grounds that he received bribes from Turkish diplomats and businesspeople to open the Türkevi building without passing a fire inspection. But the fact that the same question was not asked to President Erdoğan, who is in the sole position of authority, and that Hürriyet and NTV deleted the news on this subject from their webpages is a complete journalistic absurdity.

WHERE WERE THE JOURNALISTS AT THE BARBECUE?

The images of AKP members, including Minister of Youth and Sports Osman Aşkın Bak, Hulusi Akar, and Bülent Tüfekçi, taken at a barbecue at a ceremony in Kayseri, were widely discussed. Hulusi Akar described these news reports as “Lies, deceit” and brought up “press ethics.”

Kayseri Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Memduh Büyükkılıç also made a statement, arguing that sausage was cooked at every event to promote Kayseri's sausage and pastrami, saying, “We offered sausage, we saw that they didn't even take a bite.”

However, I scanned; there is no photo or footage of the barbecue fanning in the Municipality's bulletin regarding the ceremony on September 18th. Wouldn't an activity done for promotion be announced in the bulletin? More importantly, there was no barbecue photo/footage in the news of the local media and even İHA, and the barbecue incident was not mentioned even for a single line.

At the very least, information such as “Ministers cooked sausage, it was offered to those attending the ceremony” or “Ministers cooked and ate sausage” should definitely have been in the ceremony news. I don't know if they didn't realize its importance or if they acted with protectionism, but it is a serious journalistic deficiency.

The pro-government media also did not report on the “barbecue party” footage that appeared on social media three days later, but they published the denials of the Mayor and Hulusi Akar. If they had written it in the first news reports, it would have been journalism; publishing the statement afterward became AKP advocacy.

In a single sentence:

The media, ignoring the contagiousness of suicides, romanticized the suicide of social media phenomenon Kübra Aykut with headlines such as “No one saw my pain” (Hürriyet), “DramaTIC” (Takvim), and “I was dying, no one saw” (Posta), and published it in detail.

DHA, Habertürk, Gazete Pencere, Sözcü, and YirmidörtTV, which do not specify gender as “male drivers” in traffic fight news, emphasized that the drivers were women in the traffic argument in Başakşehir and reported it with headlines such as “Female drivers' wrong-way fight.”

The pro-government media ignored the incident where a Greek coast guard boat entered Turkish territorial waters, came as far as the Datça coast, and even one officer stepped onto land.

The opposition media—except for Sözcü columnist Necati Doğru—ignored the finding of electronic cigarette materials in the vehicle belonging to CHP Edirne Deputy Ediz Ün and Ün's statement that he resigned, until the statement came.

The British American Tobacco (BAT) company hosted a group of journalists in Trieste, Italy, and gave them a tour of its tobacco product facilities; in return, news about the company was published.

Hürriyet's headline “Brad Pitt gang busted” was wrong; it was not Brad Pitt, but the “Fake Brad Pitt” gang that was caught.

Cumhuriyet's headline “Release for 17 defendants who martyred a policeman,” which contained a judgment regarding those released and made it appear as if they all participated in the killing of the policeman, was wrong; the correct one was the headline “Conditional release for 17 suspects in the martyred policeman case” in Akşam and Milliyet.

In Türkiye's news “It's called a cash withdrawal machine but it doesn't give cash,” since it was not specified which bank the broken ATMs belonged to, all banks were shown as responsible.

In Yeni Şafak's news “Full marks to Kaybis from activists,” there was not even the name or words of a single person among the “activists” who were claimed to have given full marks.

In the news “Cyber threat in the digital cemetery” by Türkiye and Sabah, the information about where and when Waste Energy Producers Association President Ali Rıza Öner spoke was missing.

Yeni Akit, in its news “They bowed to the rampant minority,” and Yeni Şafak, in its news “Hasty decision,” defended cult leader Yusuf Ziya Gümüşel, who “married off” his daughter when she was six, and his “son-in-law” Kadir İstekli, and criticized their imprisonment.

Five days after the gastronomy festival in Gaziantep ended, it was published in Hürriyet as two pages with the headline “Gastroantep.”

The Türkiye newspaper used hate speech against the entire Greek nation due to the actions of a group of fans by writing “The Greeks were itching before the match” on top of the news “Impudence from PAK.”

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