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Evrensel newspaper turns 25: Trying to understand and change every day anew...

In describing Evrensel’s difference, we speak of the “5W1H + 11th thesis.” That is journalism that does not just try to understand the world, but, with reference to Marx’s 11th thesis, at the same time to change the world.

Evrensel newspaper turns 25: Trying to understand and change every day anew...

Fatih POLAT

It is hard in a brief article to try to tell the story of a newspaper that has turned 25. There are those who sometimes inquire, “Don’t you think of writing Evrensel’s history?” Let this be a reply to them, too: This I would humbly suggest is a business to be ventured on in the spirit of having a few years under the belt not to say having turned old. Evrensel is a newspaper that is still living out its youth. So, we are currently busy experiencing and deriving enjoyment from this history rather than writing it. It will be written when its time comes.

When Evrensel was first preparing to set out on the road, Turkey was a difficult country. Even if we look at it purely from the journalistic sphere, it was a period marked by murders of journalists and murders by unknown perpetrators. These acts were later theorized from within the state mentality in the official Susurluk report.

Today, too, we are in a period in which, on the pretext of the 15 July coup attempt, many press outlets have been closed, trials have been brought against a disparate range of hundreds of journalists and Turkey has the highest number of imprisoned journalists.

Alongside the ruling party’s automatized interventions in the press realm, the change caused within the press sector by the neoliberal transformation process has also affected the profession. With the “pool system” based on the idea of doing a lot of work with few people deepening exploitation in the press realm, the way things now work is that journalists have to do their job under harsher conditions and dismissals have become perpetual.

With changes to publishing policies instigated by the nexus of boss-ruling party relationships having turned the major media structures into the ruling party’s media, this has consequences of two kinds for whoever has ended up outside these media structures. While some have turned to conducting their profession in media structures with smaller budgets as part of the internet media or trying to continue their efforts in connection with foreign press outlets, some have gone through this process as if the end of journalism and interpreted it as such.

As Evrensel is a newspaper that continues to publish with modest means, the scale is very different when it comes to living and discussing its own story.

To what extent has Evrensel managed to force this realm open in periods in which ruling parties have narrowed the realm of truth? Has it managed sufficiently to live up to the task incumbent on it of fostering popular access to the truth and true information?

For example, while the ruling party media was legitimizing the ruling party’s arguments around the new Istanbul airport with its coverage, was Evrensel capable of engaging in a journalism there that made sufficient effort to be the voice of workers forced to work under inhuman conditions of exploitation?

We can ask these questions with reference to every area Evrensel has tried cover.

An important facility that Evrensel has had from its outset is its basis in a powerful news-flow relationship with its readers that is a natural result of its view of journalism and at the same time provides it with input every day. This is the only way it can keep abreast of factories or a development in a remote corner of Turkey that enables it to directly monitor the effects of the economic crisis. There was also an important influence of input from the ground up in our enhanced reporting of women’s issues that has started of late because the agencies to which we subscribe do not in fact look in this direction. There is no way of rapidly staying up to speed in all these areas with a limited number of professional reporters.

We also rely on similar resources when it comes to monitoring and reporting world events. However, the printing or inclusion on our website as confirmed information of information that reaches the paper most certainly also calls for a confirmation process. That of asking the other party, checking news as far as possible and, if there are gaps that cannot be rectified, a preference not to run rather than the easy solution of publishing with a clause like “it was alleged that.”

These things notwithstanding, news reporting is without doubt a business that becomes easier or harder depending on the extent of the material resources at one’s disposal. Difficulties in this regard sometimes may render the realization of a project in my mind impossible. The reply to those not from the profession is simple: “Let’s not try to compete with market journalism.” However, the matter actually goes beyond this. Mindful of the historical attainments of journalism, they also in fact engender a need to force yourself to do the best you can and struggle to break out of your own shell. Again and again each day.

I could say more about this matter, but I think the point has been made and let us move to another aspect of our story. While websites were digital locations to which the printed newspaper was transferred when Evrensel started publishing, they have now become the press tools where news appears the fastest. This process of change tells us something new. There is a need for journalism that is swift flowing and never halts and chases after the facts and tries to understand and report them. This is necessary, not just for print newspapers, but equally so for internet journalism. There is a need to create more in-depth content.

Analysing this process, some say, “Nowadays, readers make do with looking rather than reading.” However, the truth of the matter is that analysis supported by information and an in-depth report that covers an event in an exhaustive manner will always win accolade from the readership.

We are in days in which the visible component of a story is conveyed to the reader very fast. When there were only printed newspapers, we could say the journalist experienced the world one day in advance since journalists had made the newspaper the reader read saying, “Let’s see what happened today” the day before. This is not the way of things now. The reader and journalist now access the news more or less simultaneously. Hence, there is need in both print newspapers and internet journalism for enhanced reporting that can show the part not visible to the reader at a glance, the background to a story, and will aid the reader to comprehend the probable consequences.

This was done yesterday and is today, too. However, it is a fact that journalism based on speedy reporting of the facts predominates.

In describing Evrensel’s difference, we speak of the “5W1H  (What? Who? Where? When? Why? How?) + 11th thesis.” That is, a journalism that does not just try to understand the world, but, with reference to Marx’s 11th thesis, at the same time to change the world.

But we are in times in which we cannot pull things off with these pithy words alone. There is a need for journalism that is able to convey both the information of understanding and the information of change in greater depth and in all its glory to the reader.

Verging on a quarter of a century, we recall with the love and respect embodied in Metin Göktepe all our colleagues with whom we constructed Evrensel and who are not among us today.

(Translated by Tim Drayton)


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