As reported in GIT - North America earlier (see "Unmanned News Vehicles"), major press agencies and TV stations were silent for more than 12 hours after the Uludere massacre, which happened on Wednesday, December 28, around 10 pm. Fréderike Geerdink adds: A journalist who works for a big TV station said on December 29, on condition of anonymity: "We are not allowed to cover the news. Some journalists here are in tears, the masquerade is just unbearable."
The same journalist states that "when there is news somehow related to the fight against the PKK, they get a phone call from Ankara, either from the Prime Minister’s office or from another ministry. The government warns the editor in chief ‘not to show footage of the air strike and not to specify a number of deaths. We are also not allowed to use the red banner for ‘breaking news’, or put the news in the news line that is continuously running on the lower screen. We also can’t mention it on the website.’ Because in Turkey the big international stations like BBC World or Al Jazeera are not watched very much, a lot of Turks remain uninformed."
To read more on this, visit Journalistsinturkey.com
