Media Ethics and Turkey

The discussions on ethics in general meaning related with media ethics. Although, ethics vary from country to country, political regime to political regime or culture to culture, three major areas of worldwide concern within the field of communication are: truth, responsibility and free expression. In Turkey, partisian or nonpartisian people are complainant from media in many diffent ways, even journalists themselves. The complaints arise from, such as; relations of power and the institutions’ priorities, growing monopoly ownership, depolitization, being too close to the political establisment, reliance on elite resources, privacy, growing influence of the PR and advertisement industry. The study provides an overview of the ethical codes and practices of the journalism, by theoretical researches. Afterwards, examines the Turkish media mostly, through newspapers, television stations, internet, journalist organisations and regulatory bodies, also referring to researches in this field. The study shows, in reality ethical codes are not applied by either media owners or journalists. Being aware of the danger of ethical codes could be easily violated, to apply ethical codes is a basic for overcoming of the problems of media ethics. The conclusion argues that, Turkish media institutions and journalists are whether or not under severe conditions to carry out ethical codes of journalism.