Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ETCIBC-EU and Turkey: Connecting Identities, Bridging Cultures, Çanakkale, Türkiye, 11 - 13 Haziran 2009, cilt.1, ss.324-347
The effective role of the public service broadcasting model is to be non-profitable and non-governmental, with a valuable philosophy for addressing society’s national identity and consciousness. The public service broadcasting model embraces the duties of responding to all segments of society as well as acting as a tool in terms of representing the ethnic sensitivity within this society, and as a principle, providing diversity of programs during broadcasts. Public service broadcasting represents a national platform for discussion and exchange of ideas where the society as a whole reshapes its reality. With the rapid developments recorded in communication technologies, the new identity tailored for the public service broadcasting in the global media era is quite problematic. The above mentioned developments have considerably eroded the national cultural representation qualities which were initially embodied by the public service broadcasting requiring us to reconsider the current situation. Similarly; a public service broadcasting model based on good public principle, which is debatable in terms of its technological and financial structure as well as its role of the representation of the society, has problems with the political system. The general structure of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), which could be considered as the ancestor of public service broadcasting and also radio-television broadcasting initiated with state support and which still preserves this position, confirms this impression. TRT has always been and continues to be the focus of criticisms from different parties in almost all the political terms, due to its organizational functioning structure directly influenced by the decisions and determination of political authorities, its financial revenues based on public resources, personnel employment policy, slow-functioning bureaucratic structure and its understanding of journalism based on protocol rules. In addition to all these criticisms, in this study we shall also try to shed light on the relations between the public service broadcasting model in Turkey and the political authority, or in other words, the systematic oppression and control mechanism built by the political authorities on the public service broadcasting corporation and the problematic reflections of these on the contents of the broadcasts. The method of this study is based on a critical analysis to be made from the perspective of media-politics-government relationship.