The media plays a significant role in an open democratic society. It is a major tool in providing information to the public and thus forming the opinions and changing the perceptions and attitudes. This aspect of media becomes more crucial regarding especially less advantaged groups within the society. Lack of responsibility and ethical standards can easily lead to suffering of these groups or create misperceptions.
Within this context, British Council has started a project named “The Role of Media in Social Inclusion” in cooperation with various institutions. The project, which was initially developed with the collaboration of BBC WST and a consultation board consisted of the representatives of pre-eminent Turkish media institutions. Guideline development stage is being carried out with the partnership of the Turkish Journalists Association. The aim of the project is to support media professionals in their efforts for promoting responsible and principled journalism that protects public interest towards less advantaged groups through sharing European values with UK experience and developing ethical principles.
As part of this project, a scientific research has been carried out in a content analysis technique in order to identify how different social groups are represented in several leading newspapers over a nine month period. The findings of this research have been discussed in a press meeting in Istanbul on 14 June 2006. The report on the findings of the research can be accessed here..
On 7-8 October 2006 and 17-18 March 2007, trainings were given to 30 NGO representatives for strengthening their relations with the media.
During January-March 2007 British Council Turkey held a series of Guideline Development Meetings to assist in the development of framework guidelines for responsible and principled representation of less advantaged groups in the Turkish media. The meetings were held in partnership with the BBC World Service Trust and the Turkish Journalists Association. These meetings gathered diverse groups of people, from editors and journalists to academics and representatives of related non-governmental organizations as well as British Council staff and members of the Turkish Journalists Association. Each meeting hosted experts from BBC who have provided information on representation of children, women, sexual and cultural differences in the British media.
Three meetings were completed in three months, the last one taking place on 24 March 2007. The first of the series of meetings was on the ‘Representation of children in the media,’ held on 20 January 2007 in Istanbul with the moderation of Yavuz Baydar from Sabah Daily.BBC Editorial Policy Adviser Paul Smith attended to the meeting as guest speaker and gave information about the BBC guidelines regarding the representation of children in the media.
The second meeting - ‘Representation of women and sexual differences in the media’ was held on 24 February 2007 in Istanbul. This meeting was also moderated by Yavuz Baydar from Sabah Daily. During the meeting, BBC correspondent Margaret Gilmore provided information about the representation of women in the British media.
The last guideline development meeting was held on 24 March 2007 in Istanbul on “Cultural differences and the role of the media to ensure social accord.” The moderator of the meeting was Ragıp Duran from Bianet and Nick Higham from BBC News and Nick Nugent from BBC WST provided information on the representation of cultural diversity in the British media.
During the meetings, the dilemmas and obstacles to fair, objective, accurate and impartial journalism were examined through examples; and recommendations that support good practice were discussed. Recommendations generated during the meetings were developed into framework guidelines and published under the name of Media and Diversity Guidelines, which were distributed to media professionals, universities and related NGOs.
Following the completion of framework guidelines, a conference on Media and Diversity was held on 21 June 2007 with an audience of media professionals, academics and NGO representatives and BBC experts in order to provide a discussion platform for generating mechanisms to implement and promote these guidelines.
The online education program for the Turkish Journalists starts on 27 October 2008. The program that was designed for 11 modules under 4 courses, aims to contribute the skills and knowledge of the media professionals in reflecting diversity on the media within context of Turkey’s EU accession process.
For further information please contact Ozlem Demirel Cook or Berrak Altun.
If you would like to have a look at the highlights of the research and take part in the opinion poll please click here..
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