"As a Journalist, Know Your Rights"

The one-week training of young communications graduates from around Turkey and from Northern Cyprus continued with presentations by lawyer Fikret İlkiz, Esra Açıkgöz from the Cumhuriyet Magazine, and Nadire Mater from the IPS Communication Foundation which runs the course.

Açıkgöz and Mater led a session in which the new graduates were reminded of practicalities when starting in their profession, from preparing a CV to going to interviews.

Açıkgöz also spoke about how the eight years she has been working as a journalist have helped her to develop sensitivity and be more aware of prejudices she might hold.

"Know your rights"

Lawyer Fikret İlkiz, legal advisor to bianet and NTV, informed the young graduates about Law 212 on Press Employment and Law 4857 on Employment, focusing on the rights of journalists. He warned:

"Journalists are one of the groups who do not know their professional rights. Know the rights which the Law on Employment states and please read the small print in your contracts. Even that is not enough; you should demand collective labour agreements and join a trade union."

Finally, Assoc. Prof. Gülgün Erdoğan Tosun from the Aegean University's communication faculty warned the graduates to be aware of the ideological language that news items contained:

"We always speak about groups being visible, but if we look at TV programme planning, there are programmes for children or women at certain times, but this needs to be extended to programmes targeting young people, homosexuals, poor people, refugees, etc."

The first day of the course ended with a discussion on the positive and negative influences of Internet journalism on the profession. (CU-CB/EÜ)