How Turkey's journalists are preserving critical reporting
Turkish journalists left jobless by Ankara’s crackdown on the media have launched online broadcast platforms with a growing audience.
On the evening of Dec. 6, journalist Nergis Demirkaya sat in the Ankara office of the Human Rights Association (IHD) with a microphone in her hand, asking questions to her guests in a discussion on the latest developments in Turkey. It was a rendition of the program Demirkaya used to host on IMC TV, one of the many channels forcibly shut down since the July 15 coup attempt. This time, however, she had to do without a production-control room and there were no cameras shooting the program. Still, thousands of people watched the discussion, broadcast live on social media by no one else but the 15-strong audience in the hall, whose only equipment was their mobile phone.
The program was part of an alternative media initiative, HaberSIZsiniz (You are the news), launched jointly by journalists left jobless after the putsch and citizens bent on defending their right to information. Demirkaya’s mic and portable audio equipment were borrowed from a trade union. The wall behind her featured a poster depicting a TV screen in shackles — the symbol of the HaberSIZsiniz platform. And because the poster was attached to the wall with a simple sticky tape, it dropped several times during the broadcast.
