Peace Journalism and Gatekeeping in North Cyprus

Abstract

Conflicts live everywhere in the world and journalists report them. The situation in Cyprus is similar. We investigated how the media reconcile the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities and how the media contribute to the peace process in Cyprus. I believe that the journalists in both communities can play important roles in bringing a peaceful solution to the island. The basic aims of this paper are to look at the news selection processes of North Cyprus news media and to learn how news-writing journalists report conflict news and how much they abide to the peace journalism approach. A questionnaire and in-depth interviews were applied in this study. In the questionnaire, there are 37 statements, 30 of them were test statements about peace journalism, and 7 were demographic statements that are: age, gender, organization, duty, experience, salary and education.Questionnaire results show that, • North Cyprus news writing journalists display the unseen effects of conflict on the society. • North Cyprus news writing journalists accept the views that: “A journalist should take on an active role in bringing people within conflict areas together and maintaining peace” and “Do not transmit only the peace messages of the elite group.” • North Cyprus journalists tend to find out who had metaphorically thrown the first stone. • 76.6 percent of journalists agree with peace journalism oriented statements. • Female journalists, older journalists, experienced journalists, and highly-educated journalists are more peace journalism oriented than male journalists, younger journalists, inexperienced journalists, and low-educated journalists. In the in-depth interviews we try to understand how North Cyprus news editors select the news items. The advantage of in-depth interview is to allow respondents to take the discussion wherever they wish. Author met 8 news editors.In-depth interview results show that, • Most of the editor’s news criteria are the same. Generally, Cyprus problem oriented stories, accidents, robberies and crime stories are important for North Cyprus print media editors. • Almost all of them are using the Turkish News Agency news bulletin as a news source. • Editors and owners of the newspapers decide on the news selection. • News content is more important than the title of the news source. North Cyprus print media news selection is “subjective”, editors in North Cyprus print media are selecting the news according to their newspaper publishing policy, and editors are using the Turkish News Agency – Cyprus news bulletin and editors to perpetuate the newspaper owner’s “policies.”