“Journalism is the Reconstruction of Truth”

IPS Communication Foundation’s OHO program - acronym for “From Classroom to Newsroom” - has continued yesterday with keynote speeches of Kemal Göktaş, Zeynep Erdim, Fırat Erdoğmuş and Serkan Emekçi.   

The program hosts 24 new journalist candidates from 22 different universities.  

“Reflecting the truth per se is a mission impossible”

OHO’s second day kicked off with the keynote speech of Kemal Göktaş, a journalist reporting on legal issues. 

“What’s news?” asked Göktaş, starting his speech. He emphasized on the difference in various ways of news writing and those differences fabricated various practices. 

A liberal approach to journalism requires the journalist to be impartial and objective while another approach tells us that news can only be told through representations and each of these representations would constitute a reconstruction of truth, Göktaş underlined. 

“Reflecting the truth per se is a mission impossible. You can’t tell the exact truth. Even though there are countless version of truth, you can only tell the visible reality. The truth that journalists are analyzing and reading is the visible truth,” he said.   

“Government is not the only official news source”

Following Göktaş’s keynote, OHO program continued with Zeynep Erdim, BBC World Istanbul Bureau Producer. She focused on discussions on how a journalist should approach to official sources, and shared her insights on alternative news sources. 

“When we hear official resources, we think about direct people like the governor, police commissioner, deputy prime minister,etc. However, we should also keep in mind that political party representatives, worker union board members or profession union members are also official sources. Of course, we need to refer to these sources,” she continued.  

On the other hand, Fırat Erdoğmuş from Bahçeşehir University made a presentation on the relationship between social media and journalism, discussing whether or not today’s communication technologies could one day replace the profession of journalism. 

"We only wear steel vest and helmets for protection” 

OHO’s second day keynote speeches ended with Serkan Emekçi, a senior news cameraman at CNNTürk who shared his field experience with young journalist candidates. 

He also shared several footage from his experience and emphasized on the challenges that cameramen are facing in hot clash zones. 

Those who are sent out to hot clash zones are trained for being a war reporter and they are not insured either, he said. (CU/EK/BM)