RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MEDIA OWNERSHIP AND NEWS PROCESS IN TURKEY FROM THE POLITICAL ECONOMY PERSPECTIVE

This study aims to explore how directly or indirectly control policies of Turkish political government towards media besides the ownership relations of the media affect the newsmaking process. After 1980, Turkey experienced media concentration and media commercialism as a result of neoliberal policies. Though media concentration is a global phenomenon, the process has its own characteristics in Turkey. Free market is not supposed to have given rise to the birth of a free press. Intervention in relations and clientelism between the government and the media in history have merged with a rapid commercialism. This study examines the newsmaking process with the political economy approach on the basis of the ownership structure and the relations between the media and the government. The study covers an analysis of 14 digital news portals based on their headlines between the dates 20-26 January 2015 and the hours 8:00 am. -11:00 pm. The data obtained indicate a similarity between the news portals in terms of topics agendas, and news discourse