A Comparative Research Between Italian and Turkish Journalists: Professionalism,Autonomy,Clientelism,and Ethic

Abstract

The global society which we live in nowadays makes us rethink about media system, global dynamics, and the operation of the influences that these dynamics have on national media systems. Starting from the book by Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics, and under the Polarized Pluralist Model they proposed, the aim of this work is to compare Turkish and Italian journalists’ professionalization. This research has been conducted under the concept of professionalization that these authors suggested in their work and, more specifically, under the Polarized Pluralist Model, in which Hallin and Mancini recognize countries like Italy have the main characteristics described by the model; Turkey can also be included. The main goal of this work is to underline not only the similarities but also the differences that are encountered in these two countries in the journalistic professionalization. The methodology used is in-depth interviews with 10 journalists: five Italian and five Turkish journalists chosen from the biggest journals in their respective countries. Main topics taken into consideration were autonomy, clientelism, and professionalization in journalism based on ethics values. Even if the Polarized Pluralist Model seems to fit in both countries from a macro perspective, with the in-depth interviews, it is clearly seen that different cross-national nuances come out.

Introduction

The globalization phenomenon is one of the most discussed topics of the 21st century. The more comprehensive this phenomenon is, the more difficult its definition and delineation get. As Baumann (1998) would describe it, “elusive and liquid” makes us think of a very vague and changeable term.

Nowadays, globalization is a visible phenomenon and is rooted in all scientific and sectorial fields just as all the other sciences. Social sciences were also affected by it. Globalization has created a big discussion among different academics and scholars who take a position regarding this phenomenon. Globalization has created three movements: skeptical, supporters, and transformalist thinkers (Held & McGrew, 2005).

Apart from a horizontal effect, globalization also claims a vertical effect, so it not only gets wide, but it also goes in depth within various fields. Starting from this kind of approach, this work tries to observe and research how deeply globalization phenomenon is rooted in the Italian and Turkish journalistic sector, and in specific, in the professionalization of journalists, which is a term that is explained properly by Hallin and Mancini (2004) and which has been taken as an example to compare Italian and Turkish journalists’ professionalization by discussing whether national policies are still important in a globalized world.

As asserted before, the worldwide dimension of globalization phenomenon, which has been discussed by many scholars (Beck, 2003; Cerny, 1996; Giddens, 2005; Hardt & Negri, 2000; Held et al., 2005; Hirst & Thompson, 1999; Kellner, 2002; Modelski, 2005; Ritzer, 2007; Robertson, 1992; Thompson, 1995; Tomlison, 2001), gives us, in this research, an inclusive approach that helps compare journalists’ professionalization in two different countries and is useful for reaching out to a clear schema of how deep globalization has gone, if it has really gone deep. The professionalization taken in the example here is the one used by Hallin and Mancini (2004) in their book Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. It is from their book that the idea of comparing Italy and Turkey born because the authors compare 18 countries by dividing them into three groups and creating common characteristics models. The case of Italy is already present in the model named “Polarized Pluralist Model,” whereas the Turkish case seems to have all the necessary requirements to be included in the same model. Turkey seems particularly close to the Polarized Pluralist Model because of the historical characteristics that Turkey has compared with the other countries under the model, and in specific, with Italy. Instances of these characteristics would be late democratization of the country, the structure of media market and the historical development of media which is very low in those countries, the parallelism of media system with the politics, the development of journalistic professionalism which is very low in these countries compared with the other models, and the degree of how much the state intervention is in media system. Therefore, this work starts with the comparison of two countries that apparently seem to have many things in common and to have similar variables; it then continues by adding the globalization factor where a deeper similarity between the dynamics studied in these two countries is expected. In analyzing the media systems of these countries, the authors refer to four variables, one of which is professionalization. Professionalization is one of the categories utilized in their three media system models with which they divide North America, North Europe, and South Europe.

In this article, professionalism linked to ethics is analyzed using in-depth interviews with five Italian and five Turkish journalists. The interviews have three main dimensions. The first one is professionalism; the second one is clientelism; and the third one is autonomy. The journalists interviewed in this article were chosen by the base of the circulation copies of the newspapers and by the base of the ideological points of view of the newspapers they worked for, so as to have a more balanced comparison among the journalists.

Comparative Research

The comparative research of this article is indispensable not only because the theory taken in consideration was the Hallin and Mancini’s one that authors attach extreme importance to comparative research, especially to the cross-national research, but also because by comparing, a notion can be understood. As Durkheim (1965) affirms, if we want to analyze whether a phenomenon is the cause of another, we do it by comparing the cases where they are simultaneously present or absent.

Political scientists like to trace the field of study known as comparative study starting from Aristotle’s comparative analysis of the constitutions of Greek city-states. Also, Comparative Government and Politics has occupied a huge place in the political science curriculum as it emerged as a separate discipline (Holt & Turner, 1970). Morlino argues that comparative cross-cultural research is necessary for a theory to be more general and valid (Morlino, 2013).

From Western perspective, there is a long tradition of explicit comparison of the classification of Aristotle. For Descartes, the comparison is seen as a confrontation between a “more” and “less than,” between the best and the worst. For John Locke (1974, 1993), comparison is the foundation and origin of all mathematical procedures and every demonstration and certainty. According to Hegel (1999), comparison is a passage from equality to inequality, from similarity to difference and vice versa, in line with thesis–antithesis process, which is the basis of much of his philosophy. Lasswell (1968) equates the scientific method to the comparative one because, for him, the scientific method is inevitably compared. Eisenstadt (1969, p.8) argues that comparison is not a method on itself, but rather “a special focus on macro-dimensional, interdimensional, and institutional aspects of the society and its social analysis.” Here we can see a change of the analysis; the focus moved from the method for the analysis to its content.

Giovanni Sartori (1971) argues that the comparison is a control method for generalization, deduction, or view type “if . . . then.” Kohn (1987, p. 17), while speaking about comparative research, expresses himself in these words: “I think that there is much to be gained from investigating whether what we learn from research in any one country holds true in other countries as well.” He continues by asserting that cross-national research is indispensable for the establishment of the generality of findings and the validity of analysis that can be seen in single-nation studies. In his opinion, cross-national research is valuable because it forces us to develop our interpretations of cross-national differences, inconsistencies, and variables that could never be noticed in a single-nation study. Form asserts that (cross-national) comparative sociology is probably one of the fields with more methodological advice on a small database (Form, 1979). Esser’s (2013) point of view on comparative research in communication and media studies contrasts different macro-level cases at one or more points at a time. The necessity for more precise and reliable comparisons is indispensable for the political and the economic reality which are driving forces behind the demand for more cross-national comparisons and they are often needed to be applied to specific problems.

The comparative analysis has given us the possibility to notice new things that we had not observed before, and with that assist, a new concept has come out by forcing us to clarify the extension and applicability of those concepts (Hallin & Mancini, 2004).

Starting from a comparative research, this study becomes more of a “cross-national” research, which refers to studies that are clearly comparative and that analyze two or more nations with comparable data in a systemic way. Cross-national research is a useful method for developing sociological theories by using basically two types of research findings: similarities and differences. (Aydın, 2016) Similarities in this kind of research widen the sociological knowledge because similarities in cross-national research can help find various sociological interpretations, whereas it is much harder to analyze cross-national differences. Thus, when we have similarities in cross-national researches, the first step is to concentrate on what is structurally similar in the countries that are compared, not on the divergent historical processes that create these similarities. The second half of the formulation directs us to interpret differences in cross-national research in terms of historical, cultural, political, or economic characteristics, which are a more complicated issue (Kohn, 1987).

The theoretical and political issues to be addressed in cross-national research can be equally important for sociologists from all the countries included. The important worth of cross-national research compared with other researches relies on the fact that a much broader range of comparisons can be made in comparative research; these are comparisons of political and economic systems, of cultures, and of social structures. The flexibility of cross-national research gives the opportunity to make various comparisons within one general analytic framework. On the contrary, this kind of analysis is important and valuable in the social investigation because it makes us aware of variations and to similarities, and this can contribute to concept and theory formations (Esser, 2013). Most scholars argue that this kind of method is useful for the generalizability of theories and the validity of interpretations coming from single-nation studies. Comparative research poses many challenges to the analysis of media systems. When very different systems or periods are analyzed, the extent of the differences may overwhelm meaningful comparison (Hallin & Mancini, 2004).

The importance of this work resides on the fact that cross-national research and comparative research are essential not only for the geopolitical dynamics we live with nowadays but also for the correlations and interrelations these dynamics have and how they act globally and nationally. This kind of researches have been usually conducted on Europe and U.S. media; thus, the need for a broader point of view and comparative research with Turkey could open different doors to other countries, too. The willingness for this work to be a comparative research comes from the knowledge that if a certain phenomenon can be studied on a larger scale and by comparing the effects and development of the phenomenon, a wider picture of the phenomenon can be seen and it can allow us to understand it better.

Polarized Pluralist Model and Professionalization

Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) work on Comparing Media Systems has as the goal of figuring out the relation between media and politics by analyzing and comparing 18 media systems in West Countries.

The authors propose three models for the countries taken into consideration. The authors divide the media system of European states and North America into three different models:

• “The Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model” which includes South European Countries such as Italy, France, and so on.

• “The North/Central European or Democratic Model” which is used in North and Central Europe, such as Denmark, Germany, Sweden, and so on.

• “The North Atlantic or Liberal Model” which can be found typically in North America and England.

The authors stress the fact that the so-called “models” are in fact “ideal types” a’la Max Weber, but they are necessary to simplify and to catch the empirical reality in the complexity of the media system.

In their work, Hallin and Mancini (2004) tried to observe the various political and economic system variables in those countries and to find out four dimensions. The dimensions taken into consideration have deep roots, which had big influences on the media systems, in the history, and the politics of the countries studied. The main characteristics based on the four variables chosen by Hallin and Mancini are the starting point of their models. Each model is defined from four different dimensions, which are the structure of media market, which analyzes the historical development of mass media; political parallelism which is the degree of how much the media system went parallel with the politics; the development of journalistic professionalism (professionalization) which includes autonomy, instrumentalization, and clientelism; the state intervention in the media system; and how and how deep the state intervention was. In their models, all these variables are correlated to each other. And, by analyzing these four variables, it is seen that Turkey seems to fit perfectly in the Polarized Pluralist Model.

The term professionalization used in this article is taken from Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) model, and in particular, from the Mediterranean Model, which involves Italy. The affinity is seen in Turkey for the Italian historical development of media system. It can also be expanded to the Turkish case.

The term professionalization or professionalism in a lot of cases seems to be ambiguous. In Wilensky’s point of view, profession is “based on systematic knowledge or doctrine acquired only through long prescribed training” (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 33; Wilensky, 1964, p. 138). Even an ideal form of professionalism can be difficult to find in journalism because it does not have such doctrine, but formal professional training in journalism is becoming more and more common to have determinate rules of conduction. The professionalization of journalism in the Mediterranean Model is not that developed because of different factors: The political and literacy root of journalism in those countries and the political parallelism developed and rooted in time are strong. In this kind of countries, organizations and journalists’ units are pretty weak compared with the other models’ countries (Hallin & Mancini, 2004).

As it is argued by Hallin and Mancini, the more journalists keep being employees of large enterprises rather than owning their “means of production,” the further their level of autonomy aggravates (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). Michael McDevitt argues that autonomy is a fundamental characteristic of professionalism (El Richani, 2016). Mellado and Humanes (2012) describe autonomy as “a multidimensional construction” that can be figured out by considering different factors like how free the journalists are, how crucial this notion to their profession is, and individual, organizational and geopolitical factors. Other factors that can influence autonomy deeply can be seen in the size and type of the news outlet, commercialization, media concentration, and ownership (Weaver et al., 2006).

Ethics in Journalism

Professionalism in journalism is directly linked to ethics (Mellado, 2017). Kieran (2000) suggests that journalism is an industry, and like all the industries, profit is the main goal for the market economy it has, in which journalists are just workers who have to make a living. However, journalism is a profession, a vocation which has solid bases on ethical principles and which regulate the journalists’ conduct. Kieran continues by claiming the fact that ethics and professionalism are seen as co-requisites. In journalism, ethics is necessary, but on the contrary, nowadays it is more and more difficult to preserve those ethical principles that Kieran and Wiggings spoke about in their works because the world we live in is governed by economic and market-driven forces that make journalism. Consequently, journalists are under pressure, especially by the power that economic and market-driven forces have on ethics. Ethics is generally conceived as the philosophical study of morality as a discipline, as an area of study (Wiggings, 2009).

Media ethics is, in specific, the philosophical study of morality in media context institution and professional practice, including the ethics of media content. Media ethics is a kind of applied ethics being “the application of ethical theories to practical situations where there are moral choices, which have implications for professionals, and which may often be challenged in the courts” (Horner, 2015, p. 5). Media ethics is a way linked to freedom of the press because only by having ethical freedom, the ethical conduct can be reached. Freedom of the press is an important value in a liberal democratic society. Such freedom is a crucial condition in maintaining individual autonomy, in the development of civil rights, and in the promotion of the public interest. One side believes that free markets are the best means of delivery of the kind of media content that audiences want because they think that society’s interests are better served by permitting markets to govern media institutions’ development and the distribution of media products and services. What is in contrast to this idea is the vision that markets tend to drive, to distort, and limit the diversity and plurality of content, and some forms of media content that cannot be left to the market. The best interests of society are public service broadcasting that can preserve cultural standards and can promote artistic and technical innovation. Mill’s main idea is that individual liberty and free speech ought to be restricted only if one’s action or speech is liable to harm others, is a failure to act in accordance with a duty to others, or violates the good manners required in a public place. The damage made by the censorship is slowing down the testing and emergence of truth. According to Mill, the truth of an opinion is a part of its utility, and he continues by arguing that individual and social progress is grounded in the discovery of the truth. The rational attitude in confronting with the world and trying to understand it is to have open-mindedness, and such openness should be reflected also in our institutions (Mill, 2001).

Ethical values in journalism should be a universal value and are directly connected to journalists’ code of conduct and their profession.

Research Methodology

The research started with a literature review of the Italian and Turkish press based on the origin of the democratization of those two countries. The democratization of Italy and Turkey, regarding other countries, is pretty similar. Both have late democratization, which had a big influence on the media market, on the press, and on the development of journalistic professionalism. Starting from the point that Italy and Turkey have several points in common from the Mediterranean Model (Hallin & Mancini, 2004), in this work, the aim is to underline the similarities of these two countries within the journalistic field.

The methodology used is in-depth, qualitative interviews because they are good tools to use in planning a research. Their open-ended, discovery-oriented method allows the interviewer to explore the respondent’s feelings and specific perspectives on a subject profoundly. The whole process is helpful in reaching background information that can shape further questions that are important to the topic. The in-depth factor, linked with comparative research, serves us to have a deeper view of the press system in Italy and Turkey, and the journalistic professionalism in those two countries. The journalists who were interviewed work for the main newspapers in their respective countries, and the newspapers were chosen based on the daily circulation and their political point of views. This was done so as to create an equal and representative of all sides within the variety of newspapers. In Italy, the journalists who were interviewed worked for la Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, Il Mattino, and Libero. They are all daily national journals. Regarding Turkey, the journals taken into consideration are Hürriyet, Milliyet, Cumhuriyet, Daily Sabah, and Akşam. They are also daily national journals. The interview with those journalists had the aim to specify the categorization of professionalization that Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) Model mentions. To have a more complete idea of the situation of the press in those two countries, specifically about the press, the in-depth interview research seemed to be of crucial importance. In those interviews, 12 questions were posed. Those questions were planned under the professionalization of Hallin and Mancini, and there were three main categories: clientelism, professionalism, and autonomy. Those categorizations were directly linked to the ethic value. Those were the key points of the interviews that were useful to complete the micro-level of the study and that made it easier to see details that gave a richer point of view to this research. Because of the strict schedule of the journalists, especially the Italian journalists, some interviews were through mail exchanges, and some were face-to-face. Turkish journalists were interviewed face-to-face, whereas Italian journalists through mail exchanges.

Even the comparison between two nations is not easy. The intent in this work is to see the similarities in the journalistic field about the two countries that have Mediterranean culture in common.

Clientelistic Variable

The part that this work focuses on is primarily on clientelism in the journalistic field. By clientelism, we refer to the interchange of favors between a boss and a client that is normally used in the political field but extended in all other fields that have this kind of relationship. Then, the research focuses on the degree of the dissonance between the political view of the journalist and the journal’s policy.

Clientelism is an ancient phenomenon. In general terms, it is a long-term relationship in which two parts of status and power exchange flows of goods and services whose value is not directly measurable nor can it ever be balanced (Hallin & Papathanassopoulos, 2002; Tunç, 2015).

Hallin and Mancini (2004) described clientelism as a phenomenon linked to public and private media instrumentalization. Referring to the case of public media, they assert that appointments are made more related to political loyalty than professional principles, regarding private media owners having political connections that are necessary for them to achieve government contracts and concessions for their broadcasting and the development of their businesses (Padovani, 2005). A good example of private media owners and their relation with clientelism can be Silvio Berlusconi who created his media empire thanks to his political connections. These owners utilize their power and relations to enter and intervene in the political world by using their media businesses as a tool of negotiation. A confirmation of what is said before could be that we can keep in mind the fact that Berlusconi became Italy’s prime minister various times. In the case of Turkey, Aydın Doğan, a Turkish businessman who owned a newspaper, although the economic turnover was negative, used the newspaper as a power to utilize against the political sector and to strengthen his relations with the elite. In this kind of example, clientelism is strong, so is the political parallelism.

A strong connection between clientelism and journalism has to be noticed in Italy and Turkey, especially with the contributes of “savage deregulation,” as regulatory authorities could not manage to enforce broadcast regulation for several years. The fact that laws are not specific and sufficient for media creates a situation for particularistic pressures, where politicians can pressure media owners with the imposition of a tax, and other laws, and where media owners can pressure by distorting public officials’ image or by showing their wrongdoing purposefully (Murialdi, 2006). Clientelism is a phenomenon that can enter the media structure deeply. That is why lower levels of professionalization of journalism are presented where there is normally clientelism, because journalists tend to integrate with clientelist networks, and their connections tend to integrate with parties. Owners weaken their professional teamwork (Piattoni, 2001).

The in-depth interviews had a goal to see how clientelism is developed in the journalistic field within the relations of the journalists and their superiors and how the journalists get their professional job. To be more understandable, Italian journalists are abbreviated as IJ, whereas the Turkish journalists are abbreviated as TJ.

The first question posed in the interview was an open-ended question. The journalists were asked to describe how they became journalists:

Can you explain how you started Professional journalism (internship, job advertisement, acquaintance, etc.)?

Of five Turkish journalists, just three of them could get the job thanks to a clientelistic favor; an acquaintance helped them to get the job. Because, even if in the qualified cases, they said that it was very difficult to get a job as a journalist without knowing anybody.

Regardless of whether they had a journalistic education or whether they did an internship for the journal they worked for, what came out here is that they still needed someone who could help them enter that field. Here are two reported affirmations of the Turkish journalists:

I started working in the newspaper through an acquaintance. My friend worked there and got out of work. And I asked him to be a reference. I asked him if he knew somebody who worked there. (TJ)

Another Turkish journalist affirms that he started to work for a newspaper thanks to a relative who helped him to get the job.

In the Italian case, while posing this question to the Italian journalists, no clientelistic favor comes out of their mouth. All the five journalists got their jobs thanks to the internship they did or thanks to applying to the newspapers’ job announcement. They all have a journalistic background and they did not mention any kind of clientelistic favor on getting the job.

Professionalization Variable

The first question posed to the journalists had the double role to test the clientelistic factor, but also to have an idea of the professional road they saw during their career. Hence, going on with the first question, the result is that in the Turkish case, there was three journalists out of five did an internship in the journals they worked for.

In those three cases of the internship, one was particularly worthy of being reported. This journalist did her internship for 18 months and did not take any kind of remuneration. After that, she worked for almost a year without health insurance. What this journalist reports is that she started with an internship that normally has a period of a month, but she did it for 18 months without getting paid or having any kind of insurance, even if she worked actively.

The results of these interviews suggest that of the five Turkish journalists, only two had a journalistic education, and the remaining three could have the job thanks to a clientelistic favor; in other words, an acquaintance helped them get the job because even in the qualified cases, they said that it was very difficult to get a job as a journalist without knowing nobody. One of the words used by three of the Turkish journalists in answering the first question is that they became journalists by “case” and that they had the possibility to enter the journalistic world at a certain point in their life. One of the Turkish journalists argued that he started to be a journalist by correcting mistakes, and he did so just because he needed a daily salary, not because he wanted to.

In the Italian case, four of the five journalists started their career by working for local newspapers, and they got the internship thanks to job announcements. After working for local newspapers, they got national jobs on time. Two of the journalists having the internship had compensation. All the five journalists got the job thanks to the internship they did or thanks for applying to the newspapers’ announcement. They all have a journalistic background and they did not mention any kind of clientelistic favor in getting the job:

I started to become the proof-reader, and then the (paid) archivist for an afternoon newspaper in my city: “Il Corriere Mercantile” which I always read due to familial reasons. In that newspaper, in a cooperative (he closed it three summers ago), at the age of 18, I started to collaborate as a reporter (paid per piece) first for the sports pages and then for the pages of Spettacoli, the chronicle of the neighborhood, and in general, news from the small town. Then I switched to a morning city newspaper: Il Lavoro. And finally, for a national newspaper like la Repubblica, I moved from Genoa to Rome. I have a broad experience: print, radio, internet, video stories, also the topics addressed. (IJ)

In a second moment, after having a general view of how journalists get their jobs, the interview proceeds with a category of questions about the definitions that journalists had about themselves and on what they focus on when they write an article. The journalists had to choose what kind of journalism represented them better from the definition we find below:

In general, in the literature on journalism, the distinction between neutral journalism and advocacy journalism is proposed; the advocate journalism claims to reflect reality in a faithful and substantially passive way. The latter, on the contrary, is a supporter of critical information; instead, it takes part and has an essentially active role. (Donsbach & Patterson, 2004, p. 265)

With this kind of question, I wanted to show how similar the self-perception that those journalists have about themselves and how they define themselves as journalists is.

In the Turkish case, two of the five journalists define themselves as a part of the advocacy journalism because they assert that this kind of journalism can be a new mood of democracy, and the journalists should convey their opinion to their readers. One journalist defined himself as advocacy for the first time in his career, and with time, he changed his vision to neutral journalism, whereas the Italian case has four journalists for the advocacy journalism. Here are two reports of Italian journalists’ opinions:

The journalist is active in society by definition and his actions contribute to changing the society in which he lives. Every journalist is first and foremost a reporter who reports the facts according to his reality, up to where he can prove it. Where it fails to arrive, the reporter must necessarily confine himself in hypotheses and present them as such. (IJ)

Passive and neutral information do not exist. There are points of view with which facts are framed. It is like taking a picture during street clashes. If you stand on the police or protesters’ side, the message can change. The important thing is that the point of view to buy or to read or choose the “partisan” media is clear to the reader. (IJ)

Going on with the interview, the journalists were asked to express their ideas about what the most important thing in composing news was. The answers were different, especially between the Turkish and the Italian journalists, but what caught my attention was one of the Turkish journalists’ answers that affirmed that the first thing coming to his mind was the fact that he asked himself that whether the news were to be published, would it be processed, or have a penalty for that. The other Turkish journalists accentuate the importance that they focus on the accuracy while writing an article.

Hence, what can be seen in the Turkish journalist’s answer is that they pay particular attention to the accuracy of the news, whereas, as seen below, the first thing the Italian journalists think about before they write an article is the structure and the language of the news, and how it can be more readable, clear, and effective for the readers.

One of them asserts,

Attack of the piece because it is essential to catch the reader’s attention. Use simple and understandable words so as not to cast doubt or confusion on the reader. Limit the use of foreign words. In conclusion, like the attack is the dessert that leaves the final taste.to the reader. (IJ)

Bringing back all the information in their entirety, in an objective way makes it easy even for “non-experts” to understand. (IJ)

I first consider the strength of the news that I am going to tell, therefore, the reader’s comprehension of the text. Then, a good connection between the facts and their consequences: is important. For these three points, I try to use a rich and at the same time simple language. (IJ)

Autonomy of Journalists

Hallin and Mancini (2004) assert that professionalization in journalism in the Polarized Pluralist Model is not as evolved as in the other models. This is due to journalism having strong connections to the political world. On the contrary, it is suggested that journalists in the Mediterranean model have a limited autonomy created by conflicts of power and authority within news organizations. A big factor of the law professionalization of journalists in those countries has been the state, which has a key role as an owner, regulator, and funder of media, but which has often shown its weak capacity to regulate effectively (Ragnedda, 2014). One of the biggest historical periods that marked the low regulator role of the state was the transition to liberal politics in the 1980s and 1990s (Harvey, 2007), when a really fast and uncontrolled transition from a state control passed and commercial broadcasting started. It was what Traquina (1995) called the “savage deregulation.”

Starting from the definition above, as a third categorization of the in-depth interview, the autonomy’s one was proposed. The questions posed about the autonomy regarded autonomy as the news they write, as the autonomy of journalists in writing their articles, as the autonomy with their superior, with the general politics of the journal they are working for, and if any of their news have ever been deleted.

About the autonomy and the relationship that they have with their superiors, the Turkish journalists have different cases, and the relationship with their superiors is very bad because of various discordances, or pretty good because they were charged by people they know. In the Italian case, the journalists mention a good professional relationship with their superiors, with whom they can openly discuss the news they wrote. The answers that came from the Turkish journalists have different cases. The relationship with their superiors is very bad because of various discordances, or pretty good because they were charged by people they know. Thus, in both situations, they do not have a professional distance and relationship; they feel the hierarchy or they are totally friendly because of their clientelistic relation.

In the Italian case, the journalists talk about a good professional relationship with their superiors, with whom they can openly discuss the news they wrote:

The autonomy of a journalist gives him its ability to understand what the news is of interest to readers, not its political sponsors (We do not have any, thanks to God) or those who solicit the publication of news just to please the director. (IJ)

My relationship is good, active: there is a continuous comparison on the quality and scope of the news. (IJ)

The questions go on with the intervention of the news written by the journalists, and whether they feel autonomous regarding the written news. Some of the answers from the Turkish journalists are the following:

I feel free, yes, but we do not do every news, it depends on the newspaper management and policy. (TJ)

I do not feel free from time to time. (TJ)

In the Italian case, all the journalists say they are autonomous on the news they do regarding their superiors:

Yes, but a good journalist has to fight every day—and bring his own news—to ensure that autonomy is guaranteed in practice and on a daily basis. (IJ)

His intervention occurs on all the news that I propose or that I produce: we talk about it first, he checks it when he passes it to the computer, he makes suggestions or asks for interventions where he believes there are shortcomings, absences, excesses. He gives compliments if he considers the piece good. I put forward my considerations, often in a line, sometimes not with those of my editor. (IJ)

One of the last questions is the following:

Has any news/article you prepared at your most recent institution been rejected by a higher- ranking employee? If your news or article was rejected, what do you think is the reason for this?

During the Turkish interviews, what came out was that there is a lot of self-censorships done by journalists in a way not to create problems. Also, in the Turkish case, big editing, cancelation, or rejection of the publication of news was reported by four of the five journalists, and the reason for the cancelation is related to the policy of the newspaper and to the relation that the newspaper has with the country’s policy. The Italian case seems to be more autonomous. Editors let the autonomy to the journalists and intervene just for small corrections like the length of the news or the general style, but never intervene radically or censor the news.

Conclusion

The aim of the interviews conducted was to see the similarities between two countries that have a lot of similar historical and mediatic points in common that are included in the Mediterranean Model of Hallin and Mancini.

The interviews had the intention to compare professionalism, autonomy, and clientelism with an ethical connection in the journalistic field. The answers collected from the journalists are not all face-to-face; hence, an important factor that has to be enlightened is the fact that all the Italian journalists have answered the questions via e-mail, not via their personal e-mail addresses, but via their official ones, and also that the Italian journalists are all journalists writing political news. Therefore, by answering via e-mail, they had also the time to reflect about their answers and about the message that they would like to convey. Two of the interviews conducted with the Turkish journalists were via e-mail, and three of them were face-to-face. The face-to-face interviewers did not get the questions before the meeting. So as to have a better perception of the information collected, it is necessary to be aware of the e-mail and the face-to-face answers.

Even if clientelism is very present in Italy and the Italian media (Piattoni, 2001), any kind of clientelistic favor among the Italian journalists did not come out during the interviews, while studying the relationship between the media owner and the politic. They all assert that they got their job by replying to the journals’ announcements or after an internship for the journal they worked for. On the contrary, the fact that some journalists answered via e-mails that does not protect their privacy makes us think about reading those answers from a different point of view. In the Turkish case, three of the five journalists said that they have used clientelism to enter the journalistic field, and one of them particularly mentioned that having the right education was not enough to get the job and that the clientelistic favor was the only choice.

Regarding the professionalism in the journalistic field, there is even the Order of Journalists in Italy; this profession is not protected just as the Orders of other fields (Mancini, 2009a), and it still has missing points. The same situation can be seen in Turkey where the journalistic world developed its education pretty late compared with the European world; thus, a pretty similar situation would be expected in both Italian and Turkish journalists. The data collected point out various situations. In the Italian case, all the journalists have a journalistic education and a journalistic formation before entering the journalistic field, formation, or internship totally paid by the journals. The Turkish case presents three journalists being journalists “by chance.” They started to do journalism for money and went on because they did it well, and those who had a professional education and completed an internship did not have a paid internship period. The difference between the Turkish journalists who had a journalistic education and who did not lies in the age of these journalists; the younger ones are those who studied journalisms. Hence, it can be deducted that the journalistic education is developing in the new generations. While posing the question, “What do the journalists pay attention to before writing news?” what was really interesting was the perception that the journalists had about the question; the perception was directly related to their everyday professional experience. Among the Italian journalists, the response was addressed more to the need of the reader and to how the news could be more understandable and attractive to the reader, whereas among the Turkish journalists, the most frequent answer was that they checked whether the news was true or not, whether it would be worth publishing the news, or what would the consequence of that published news be. This is a kind of way that makes emerge the different realities from the Italian and Turkish journalists, not only in defining how free in their position is but also in guiding the journalism they have to do.

The third categorization of the in-depth interviews was the autonomy of journalists in writing news and the autonomy they had with their superior. The Italian journalists affirm they feel pretty free while writing their news and pretty autonomous regarding their superiors with whom they say to have a good professional relationship in which they can openly express their ideas. Among the Turkish journalists, the situation is pretty different. First of all, there are journalists who do not feel free in their job they do, and they usually do not have a pretty good professional relationship with their superiors because they observe intervention in their news or because their superiors have strict rules, especially in political news coming from the political views of the journal.

One of the last questions was about the intervention in the news by the editors or superiors. What the Italian case was that nobody had a problem with the news. Their editors do not usually intervene in their composition; they leave small comments on the news, and from time to time, they congratulate, but none of the Italian journalists experienced the cancelation of their news. The Turkish situation is a different experience with their editors. They all have at least one or more canceled news, and their editors do not openly say their news would be eliminated. What happened is that they do not publish the news. Thus, it is a kind of secret between the journalist and the editor, a secret in which none of them asked the other part about why the news was not published.

What came out from these interviews was that almost all the Turkish journalists, even in the case they had few elimination or interventions by their editors in the news they were writing, use a lot of self-censorship while writing; it is like they find out a new way to survive in an environment where they feel oppressed. Self-censorship is their way to protect themselves and continue doing journalism.

The difference between Italy and Turkey is fundamentally different primary needs which are not deprived of ethics. As seen in the previous chapters, ethics is closely linked to the journalistic profession too, although there are different notions and conceptions of ethics. By comparing journalists from different countries, we understand how ethics can change unlike the historical period and the society in which we live. In this research, what comes out is the different vision of ethics between the two countries, and often urgent and necessary needs on the part of journalists. An example can be seen through the self-censorship that Turkish journalists do because they do not want to report the news for what it is, but because of a journalistic and legislative pressure that goes beyond their profession as journalists. What comes out of this research, especially from Turkish journalists, is the fact that despite the many obstacles in carrying out their profession, the desire to want to continue to be journalists is always very high. Although Italy and Turkey have very similar media histories, elitism, low press circulation, political realism, and a low professionalization of the press, at least with regard to the official part nowadays, Turkey has still many barriers, often due to national policies and pressures often deriving from newspapers, to overcome for the professionalization of journalists.

Concluding and attracting attention to the phenomenon of globalization, which often has its center in the discussion of the nation-state, the nation-state is increasingly dissolving with globalization. Instead, in this research, what is concluded is the exact opposite; it is the fact that the nation-state itself is still of fundamental importance and often bills regulating and intervening in the media system.