Opposition media's LGS exam and journalism warnings

The state of reporting in the opposition media has left our colleague Tuğçe Tatari quite overwhelmed. In her article on T24, she poses the question, “The situation of the mainstream media is clear; I don't even consider it worth talking about. But what about the opposition, independent, alternative media?” and makes an appeal to me:

“I request that you take the ‘opposition media’ under examination, and even if you do not have the power alone to put an end to this derailment, that you at least leave a note for history with your articles—just as you did with your warnings to the media regarding the Narin Güran murder.”

In fact, I aim to keep the opposition media under the same constant scrutiny as the pro-government media, and I try to voice the mistakes and shortcomings on that side as well. However, there are so many problems that it is often impossible for me to keep up with all of them.

Without further ado, let me get to the main issue; the allegations regarding the LGS exam were among the top topics Tuğçe Tatari suggested I examine. She was saying, “Now ask everyone, ‘The LGS questions were stolen, and all the children who are currently achieving success are under suspicion!’” It had already caught my attention, and I was planning to write about the discussions surrounding the LGS exam next week, so I moved it up.

WERE THE QUESTIONS SHARED DURING THE EXAM?

The allegations of suspicion regarding the High School Transition System (LGS) exam began nine days after the exam with a report by Can Uğur in Cumhuriyet titled, “Shadow over LGS with WhatsApp claim: Questions shared before the exam ended.”

In this report, published on June 24, it was alleged that “a PDF file of the verbal booklet was shared in a WhatsApp group containing some private education institution administrators while the exam was still ongoing at 12:00.” It was emphasized that the circulation of questions and answers in groups before the exam ended brought to mind the question, “Were the questions and answers leaked?”

Immediately afterward, the ministry made a statement; then, it was asked to Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin. Tekin said, “The subject you mentioned is correct. But there is no situation that would risk exam security.” This statement by the Minister was published in Cumhuriyet under the headline “Minister confirms LGS scandal,” but in reality, Tekin was only partially confirming the newspaper's report. Because Cumhuriyet had written that “the verbal booklet was shared during the exam,” while Minister Tekin was saying, “It was shared on social media at 11:57, one hour after the morning exam started and finished.” Undoubtedly, the two do not mean the same thing.

In its first report, Cumhuriyet wrote that the Mathematics/Science section questions were not shared in the WhatsApp group. But it did not stop there. In a second report written by Can Uğur on June 29 titled “Second act in the LGS scandal,” it was reported that the Mathematics/Science section exam questions were also shared. It was stated that a person who wrote “I have the questions” shared the questions in their group at 12:53, three minutes after the exam ended.

Let me explain the truth as follows; the first session of the LGS exam, the verbal section, started at 09:30 and lasted 75 minutes, ending at 10:45. The second session, which is the Mathematics and Science section, started at 11:30 and ended at 12:50.

Tekin says the questions and answers for the verbal section were shared at 11:57, while Cumhuriyet says 12:00. Regarding the Mathematics/Science section, Cumhuriyet says three minutes after the exam (12:53), but Tekin has no clear answer on this matter.

As a result, THE QUESTIONS FOR BOTH SECTIONS WERE SHARED IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE RELEVANT SESSION OF THE EXAM ENDED. The information that Cumhuriyet provided about the questions being shared is also correct, but with this data, we cannot say that “THE EXAM RESULT WAS AFFECTED,” “EQUALITY WAS COMPROMISED,” or “QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WERE LEAKED BEFORE THE EXAM.” Such interpretations are too far-reaching; even if politicians say so, for a journalist, there is only a suspicious situation at hand.

IS THE RECORD NUMBER OF TOP SCORERS PROOF?

After those reports by Cumhuriyet and that response from Minister Tekin, things had relatively calmed down. The real discussions and allegations of suspicion intensified after the Ministry of National Education announced the results on July 11.

On July 11, Cumhuriyet published a report titled, “Record number of perfect scores: Question marks in LGS are growing! Educators are baffled: It was said ‘the exam is hard,’ how did 719 top scorers emerge?” This report emphasized that “the 2023 record of 565 students, which was the highest number of top scorers seen to date, has been surpassed.”

Regarding the record number of top scorers, Hürriyet published “Surprising result in LGS: 719 students received perfect scores,” Milliyet published “Record broken in LGS,” and CNNTürk published “The record of history broken in LGS.” But of course, they did not present this record with question marks like Cumhuriyet did.

The emergence of a record number of top scorers is certainly noteworthy. It is also natural for it to create suspicion and, as emphasized in the Cumhuriyet report, for “old LGS scandals to come to mind.” However, it is not possible to reach a verdict based on this suspicion alone.

The fact that old scandals come to mind does not mean that what happened in the past is being repeated exactly. A journalist becomes suspicious, but uses this to wonder and investigate; they do not spread suspicion without definitive and verified data. Because the interlocutor here is not only the Ministry of National Education, but also hundreds of thousands of students who took the exam and their families.

THE IMAM HATIP TOP SCORERS IN BURSA

One of the developments that fueled the discussions was the tone Minister Tekin used while answering journalists' questions about the exam on the fly while visiting the “Name of Victory Turkey Special Children Exhibition” on July 15. He had even said, “We are explaining it clearly, as if explaining it to a moron. But they are still continuing.”

The second was the statements, allegations, and questions of Good Party Group Deputy Chairman Turhan Çömez and CHP Deputy Chairman Suat Özçağdaş. Especially Çömez's claim that “36 students from an Imam Hatip middle school in Bursa received perfect scores in the LGS” caused the situation to spiral out of control. However, this data, which Çömez took from an account named eksenhaber on X, was not true. Only two of the students who received perfect scores in Bursa were Imam Hatip students.

As can be predicted, Çömez's claim was published on many news sites without being verified or researched. Moreover, there was also a problem with the presentation of Çömez's claim. For example, it was a mistake for Cumhuriyet and Sözcü to write it as a “statement.” What an opposition MP says cannot be a “statement.” It could be an accusation, an allegation, etc., that needs to be verified.

NOW TV also should not have used definitive expressions while presenting the news, but it was a good example that they included the ministry's statements alongside the allegations and evaluations of Çömez and Özçağdaş.

MINISTER TEKIN'S CHOICE OF JOURNALIST

Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin's attitude after the allegations spread was also problematic. While there were so many media organizations and so many journalists, Tekin went and had an interview with AKP MP Rümeysa Kadak to be published on YouTube. He answered the allegations there in his own way.

Finally, he met with pro-government journalists at the Turkey Press Federation, which was newly formed by the AKP. In fact, he did not even need to make a special effort to convince those journalists that there was no suspicion in the LGS. As a matter of fact, the post by one of the journalists who attended the meeting, Akşam's Ankara Representative Emin Pazarcı, saying, “We heard the storm whipped up over the LGS, the campaign of lies and slander, from his own mouth,” was proof that he had believed the Minister from the start.

I read the reports written from that meeting. Just as I predicted, Minister Tekin had spoken, but detailed questions about the process had not been asked. They also did not dwell on his slip of the tongue when he said “Imam Hatip friends” while explaining who prepared the questions.

However, if Minister Tekin had organized a broad press conference attended by the opposition media as soon as the allegations emerged and answered all the questions, this issue would not have grown so much, and the atmosphere of “questions and answers were leaked in the LGS,” which spread especially on social media, would have been dispelled. For example, he could have provided information about what action was taken against those who took and shared images of the booklet during the exam, the content of the accusations directed at the 29 people against whom an investigation was opened in the ministry, and when the second booklet was published; he did not.

Even if he didn't do that, he could have accepted the interview request of Can Uğur, the News Manager of Cumhuriyet, who brought the allegations about the exam to the agenda, and answered his critical questions. But instead, he took an attitude that encouraged the prosecutor's office to open an investigation into Can Uğur. The response to writing news should not be dragging them to the door of the prosecutor's office. If there is a mistake, you point it out and it gets corrected; intimidating with an investigation solves nothing. As a matter of fact, Can Uğur was standing tall while going to the investigation, saying, “I do not feel the slightest regret for defending the rights of nearly 1 million of our children.”

CARE NOT TO CREATE AN ATMOSPHERE THAT QUESTIONS WERE LEAKED

To summarize, it is true that an image of the question booklet in the LGS exam was shared in a WhatsApp group immediately after the relevant session of the exam ended, and that this was contrary to the ministry's directive.

But all this does not mean that the exam questions were leaked before the exam; there is no information on this. Without information, expressions that could mean this should not have been used. Furthermore, the fact that hundreds of thousands of students would be affected should have been considered, and care should have been taken not to create such an atmosphere.

I understand, there is a loss of trust regarding these exams. However, we must still keep ourselves limited to the concrete information we have when writing the news. We should not accept the evaluations and allegations of opposition MPs and executives as verified data, and if there is no possibility of verification, we should explain this situation to the reader and viewer and report accordingly.

We should use our comments, concerns, and suspicions as a starting point to begin investigating. Suspicion cannot, and should not, be news in itself. Especially our oppositions and emotions should never become the main subject of the news.