Turkish Media

By Leon J Williams

When I mention the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons/Teyrêbazên Azadiya Kurdistan (TAK) to Turkish people living in Turkey they seem to have never heard of them. Instead stating that all ‘terrorist’ activities carried out in Turkey are the work of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party/Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan).
Why do the Turks think this? Because of the Turkish media, they are told that it is the work of the PKK and the fact that the TAK are FORMER members of the PKK seems to be hidden away from the public.

I was reminded of this issue this morning when I read an article from the Turkish tabloid Hürriyet Daily News with seeming ‘good news’ about Turkey’s progress in its EU application, further reading confused their own audience with some of the comments reading:

“I did not understand exactly what this means, Will they open new chapters or not?”

“Is it really what the headline says, to me it sounds like another delay”

I flicked over to EuroNews only to find an almost opposite headline about the same story…

Left: EuroNews Right: Hurriyet Daily News

Daily Headline – 09/04/13

Socialist wins 3rd term as President of Montenegro

The Democratic Party of Socialists (of Montenegro) (DPS) is a centre-left pro-Europe party which currently holds both positions of President and Prime Minister.

Filip Vujanovic has just won a 3rd term as president which will take him up to 2018.

Montenegro started negotiations with the EU in June last year about joining with the DPS being part of the Party of European Socialists (PES).

What’s amazing is that through all the media nonsense of the impending collapse of the European Union, the collapse of the Euro, member states exiting the Eurozone etc none of it has happened and countries are still queueing up to join with the next member being Croatia who will join in July with other countries, such as Iceland, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey having all applied to join.

The media, especially in the UK should get a grip on reality and stop pushing their bullshit agenda.

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail song by Dan & Dan

Says it all really!

Daily Headline – 16/03/13

Leveson; UK press regulation

In December I wrote about The Leveson Report.

In regards to the setting up of a regulatory body…

‘The body should consider encouraging the press to be as transparent as possible in relation to sources for its stories, if the information is in the public domain.’ – BBC

Now David Cameron and the tories (Conservatives) are trying to push through an amendment to give the press a veto over who sits on the ‘independent’ panel to oversee compliance with the regulations.

All sides agree that no serving editor or politician can be on the committee but if the press has a veto the keep on vetoing until they get someone who suits their agenda.

Not very independent now is that Dave!

Rupert Murdoch

In perfect timing as a reminder why the Leveson inquiry came to be there have been around 600 new claims of phone hacking against Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, part of News International.

Further details are set to be released on Monday.

LEVESON INQUIRY: CULTURE, PRACTICE AND ETHICS OF THE PRESS

Non-news

By Leon J Williams

The media is talking about the latest Chinese military hacking of the US, this time targeting US infrastructure.

How is this news?

Country’s military cyber departments are always hacking each other, stealing information and/or infecting systems with viruses etc and then in turn those governments deny it.

Daily/weekly occurrences are not news!

Unless something significant happens on the cyber warfare front put a sock in it!

Guess the missing word!

Murdoch apology over __________

Humorous answers are welcome!

Is the BBC obsessed with the US?

By Leon J Williams

For those who aren’t aware (if that’s possible) the BBC is a British media company with an international presence.
BBC News (that’s bbc.co.uk) has news from all round the world, in theory there is a leaning towards UK news as it’s a British company.

BBC News today has 27 main news articles on its front page here’s how they break down:

China – 1 direct & 1 indirect
Russia – 1 direct
Australia – 1 direct
India – 1 direct
Egypt – 1 direct
Japan – 2 direct
Africa – 2 direct
UK – 7 direct
USA – 11 direct and 2 indirect

So out of the 27 articles the most mentioned country was the USA with 11 directly involved articles and a further 2 articles indirectly about the US.

7 out of 10 articles relate to the US.

As a comparison the Guardian today has 20 main articles and here’s how they breakdown:

UK – 11
India – 2
USA – 2
China – 1
Syria – 1
EU – 1
Italy – 1
Pakistan – 1

At first I thought it was in general that the UK media was obsessed with the US but as it has been highlighted it’s more of the BBC’s own obsession.