A Political Economy Analysis of the Presenting Power in the Production of External Balance News in the Economy

Abstract

In the article, the basic premise of the Propaganda Model that the media, among other functions, serves the interests of powerful social groups that finance and control themselves, and makes propaganda in their favor is tested through the news of current account deficit and foreign trade deficit, which are not yet discussed in the literature and are accepted as negative indicators in the economy. In this context, it is aimed to reveal the way power is produced in the news of external balance in the economy by using the filters of the Propaganda Model. The research was carried out on the issues of Sabah, Cumhuriyet and Hurriyet newspapers, which have daily sales of over 50,000, published between 2003 and 2012. In accordance with the model, newspapers were handled according to the first four filter structures, and the dominant ideology was accepted as neoliberalism. The third filter, the source structure, has been expanded in terms of discourse structure, external and internal rhetoric, considering the discussions in the literature and the structural features of the news. The total size of the study population was determined as 400 news in the reached issues of the three popular newspapers included in the research population with the full count method, and the data sources were examined using Content analysis. Discourse structures in 36 news about power and economic policies were analyzed using Thompson's Ideological Operating Model. In the research, Sabah and Hurriyet newspapers, which show similar characteristics in terms of income and property structures, mostly produced positive discourses towards the government's economic policies and actions. This situation is consistent with their internal and external rhetorical features. Nevertheless, in the news of the Cumhuriyet, which has a low dependency on advertising and not having concentration of ownership, the attitudes towards the government policies were mostly negative and critical.