Türkiye’de Gazetecilik Alanında Ombudsmanlık Deneyimi: Sınırlar ve Mücadeleler

Abstract

pek Kaya ** Abstract The ombudsman, which started to be implemented in Sweden at the beginning of the 19th century, is actually an institution established for the public officials to fulfill their duties in an equitable manner. Over time, as the ombudsman's field of duty expanded, different types of ombudsman operating in different fields emerged. One of them is the press ombudsman. The main task of the press ombudsman is to evaluate the complaints from the readers in accordance with professional ethical principles and to write these evaluations in the newspaper column reserved for them. The ombudsman institution in the field of journalism in Turkey started to be implemented in order to contribute to professional ethics at a time when the trust in newspapers decreased. The aim of the press ombudsman, which started to be institutionalized in Turkey in the early 2000s under the name of reader representative, is to implement a self-control mechanism independent of state control and capital ownership. This research, which focuses on the Turkish experience of ombudsman practice, which tries to exist as an autonomous sub-field in the field of journalism, will be based on the field theory of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Cultural production areas are very important in Bourdieu's works. The symbolic power of cultural production areas comes from their independence. For this reason, after a discussion on the independence of the field of journalism in Turkey, the emergence, functioning and applicability of the press ombudsman will be discussed in the context of the transformations in the history of journalism. In this research, the results of the field research, which includes in-depth interviews with five reader representatives who served as press ombudsmen for Hürriyet, Milliyet, Sabah and Cumhuriyet newspapers published in Turkey,