Struggles of Journalism in Turkey

Media as a Puppet

If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people — including me — would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

— Hunter S. Thompson

Writing what is really happening has always been a brave act. In Turkey, it is getting harder every day.

A few months ago, Graph Commons organized a hackathon on current problems in Turkey: the Structured Journalism and Network Mapping Hackathon. The topics were fascinating, so I attended with my brother, who is a graduate student in economics.

It was a lot of fun. I met people from very different backgrounds: activists, journalists, directors and more. As a computer engineer, I don't often get the chance to meet such a diverse group, which is why events like this are so valuable to me.

What is Graph Commons?

Graph Commons is a platform for building and visualizing graphs. It offers plenty of features, such as filtering, graph coloring and path finding. These help you reveal hidden patterns and explore your data more easily.

First Iteration

Open the graph on Graph Commons if it doesn't load above.

Although there were other interesting topics, three of us (Kerem, Mohan and I) focused on journalism. The media is under pressure, perhaps as never before.

A couple of years ago, phone tapes were leaked to the public. The conversations covered many topics, and some were about the media. In them, powerful political actors and media owners discussed what should be censored and what should be done against journalists who published "disturbing" news.

The main reason decent journalists are in danger is illustrated in this graph. Media owners are not only media owners; they also run businesses in the construction and energy sectors. (Sidenote: I am particularly curious whether there is a correlation between media corruption and active construction and energy sectors in a country.)

As you can imagine, journalists in this position were pushed to resign or were fired on some pretext. In this work, we illustrate media workers, their previous jobs and, if they have one, their current or next job. If they don't, we draw an edge from the old outlet to an unemployed node.

We collected the data from various newspapers. We also used Diminishing Press Freedom in Turkey (Turkey Task Force, November 2014), which you can find here.

What is next?

This graph is a starting point for deeper analysis. The next step would be to add the last subject each journalist worked on.

Doing so may require help from professional journalists. The graph contains not only reporters but also higher-ranking professionals such as editors-in-chief, so it is hard to find out the "real" reason behind the scenes of a firing or resignation.

How to contribute?

There are several ways to contribute to this project.

1. Improve the data. All the data is open and available via this link. Records may contain errors, need updating, or be missing a media worker. Leave a comment for any of these issues. The format is:
   • Each row represents a job change.
   • From Where is the former outlet.
   • Time is the date the journalist stopped working there.
   • Source is where the information comes from.
   • Reason is not important for now. However, if the reason for a move (to another outlet or into unemployment) is obvious, feel free to note it and add your sources.
2. Join us. If you find the project interesting, we would be happy to have you on board. I can give you the necessary information, such as the API key and edit privileges for the data sheet.
3. Share your ideas. Tell us how to improve the graph. We have a Slack group, but you have to sign up first.
4. Send a pull request. We have a GitHub repo. Once we have discussed what you would like to add or analyze, you can send me a pull request.