The reflection of manufacturing public opinion function of newspapers to news discourse during European Union entry process of Turkey

In pluralist and participating democracies, free press takes important functions aboutconstituting balance. In this meaning, press has got duties like giving news, informing,educating, entertaining, making arbitration, arousing, building a bridge, contributing toeconomic life, constituting, canalizing, reflecting public opinion etc.In this thesis, the news relevant to the full membership negotiations between Turkeyand EU that realized in December 17th 2004 and October 3rd 2005 have been chosen as a casestudy. It is thought that different newspapers are using several discourses to manufacturepublic opinion about the entry process to EU which have been chosen as a case study. In thisframe-work, according to this problematic, it is searched that how the newspapers formvarious discourses in the process of manufacturing public opinion, how they set the agenda,what are the hidden messages in the sentences, in which perspective they produced the news,if they stick to ethic values or not. According to this aim, in this study are used the theoriesabout the relations between mass media and setting public opinion (agenda-setting, spiral ofsilence, knowledge-gap, media dependency), ethics theories (deontology, utilitarianism) anddiscourse theories. The technique of van Dijk that takes the news as a discourse has been usedin the analysis part of the study.Key words: Public opinion, Ethics, News, Discourse, Discourse Analysis.