THE REFLECTION OF VIOLENCE TO TURKISH AND AMERICAN PRESS: KADDAFI EXAMPLE

Abstract

The phrase “Arab spring” which covered too much of the world press during a year is being used for the resistance movement formed to topple leaders that have reigned their countries and people long years with allegedly dictator’s power and to bring democracy to these countries. The Arab Spring started in Tunisia and Egypt and leapt to Libya where Muammar Kaddafi was reigning for 42 years. Unlike the other Arab leaders, Kaddafi did not give up his leadership and fought until his last breath. His end was not ordinary and he was lynched after an uprising of the Libyan resistance fighters whom he referred as rats. The coverage ways of his death were subject to controversy as his death. His bloody pictures and the news about his lynching passed as last minute events in the world media occupying the discussions for days. Normally considered as unethically in means of journalism ethics, these pictures were given on the first page by many dailies, the news text featuring an ideological language. The aim of this study is to study the ways these bloody lynching visuals of a man who was much debated as a dictator, found their way to the media and to question this from the aspect of ethics. Scrutinizing he ideological meanings produced by the news texts is another objective of the study. This study draws a comparison of how this worldwide covered event was presented in the Turkish and American press. As the American press is very exhaustive, 12 dailies from the politically most important states Washington DC, California and New York -four each- were selected for the study. From the Turkish press, 12 dailies with ideologically different stance, and sufficient circulation were elected for comparison. The first pages of each newspaper were analyzed as most-read showcases of the papers. The importance of the study arises from the comparison of the American and Turkish way of press coverage that conveyed the killing of Kaddafi. As both news texts and visual material were studied, both semiotics and discourse analysis have been used as method of the study. Semiotics was particularly applied to photography to explore hidden meanings. For analyzing the meanings conveyed by news texts, discourse analysis was indispensable.