Ethical Issues in Political News Coverage: A Case Study of 2015 General Elections in Turkey

Journalism ethics is important to study, and this study focuses on infringements of journalism ethics during the General Elections of 2015 in Turkey. Its aim to find out five most circulated newspapers’ which are Zaman Hürriyet, Posta, Sözcü and Sabah, infringement of journalism ethics between two General Election of June 7th and November 1st in 2015. In this study, content analysis was used without physical measurement. Only cover pages were analysed which news was relevant to political issues. A coding sheet was used to analyse, and its reliability was .97 according to Cohen’s formula. The study was conducted to answer two major questions. (1) Is there any unethical news has been published during the two elections, and (2) what changed between the two elections on cover pages news according to journalism ethics? At the end of the research, infringements of journalism ethics were remarked by all newspapers during the elections. Main conspicuous thing is that newspapers infringed journalism ethics according to being pro-government or not. Especially, most infringements have happened before the elections, and newspapers were being changed their attitudes according to election results. Keywords: journalism ethics, general election, Turkey, content analysis