Evaluating The Sincerity Of Turkish Media Concerning The Struggle Aganist Substance Use And Addiction: The ‘Baron’ Discourse

Abstract

This study questions the sincerity of Turkish media concerning its support for the struggle against substance use and addiction within the framework of the concept “baron” and aims to reveal with which lingual and discourse-related strategies the concept of “baron” is circulated. In this scope, news about people who smuggle a massive amount of drugs, published between January-November 2006 on the websites of the three top-seller newspapers, Hürriyet, Sözcü, and Sabah, are analyzed within the framework of the critical discourse analysis developed by Teun A. Van Dijk. The results of the analysis reveal that the news about people who smuggle drugs and who are named as “barons” by the Turkish media are transferred to the reader with an encouraging and exaggerated use of language, that drug trafficking is represented as a quite lucrative and adventurous profession which provides opportunities to quickly promote or possess fame and fortune, that instead of focusing on personal, social, and economic problems caused by drug trafficking, the problem is decontextualized by putting the emphasis on individual success stories of barons, the magnitude of smuggling, how cunning the smugglers are, how they could escape from prison or how they lived in their ordinary lives. While the media uses the term “poison merchant” even for kids who are pushed to criminal activities concerning narcotics/stimulants, the preference of the concept “baron” when it’s about people who engage in massive amounts of drug trafficking reveals a necessity to question the media’s sincerity concerning the struggle against substance use and addiction.This study questions the sincerity of Turkish media concerning its support for the struggle against substance use and addiction within the framework of the concept “baron” and aims to reveal with which lingual and discourse-related strategies the concept of “baron” is circulated. In this scope, news about people who smuggle a massive amount of drugs, published between January-November 2006 on the websites of the three top-seller newspapers, Hürriyet, Sözcü, and Sabah, are analyzed within the framework of the critical discourse analysis developed by Teun A. Van Dijk. The results of the analysis reveal that the news about people who smuggle drugs and who are named as “barons” by the Turkish media are transferred to the reader with an encouraging and exaggerated use of language, that drug trafficking is represented as a quite lucrative and adventurous profession which provides opportunities to quickly promote or possess fame and fortune, that instead of focusing on personal, social, and economic problems caused by drug trafficking, the problem is decontextualized by putting the emphasis on individual success stories of barons, the magnitude of smuggling, how cunning the smugglers are, how they could escape from prison or how they lived in their ordinary lives. While the media uses the term “poison merchant” even for kids who are pushed to criminal activities concerning narcotics/stimulants, the preference of the concept “baron” when it’s about people who engage in massive amounts of drug trafficking reveals a necessity to question the media’s sincerity concerning the struggle against substance use and addiction.