Public Ads Flow To Pro-Government Media Despite Low Circulation

In the midst of debates over the fair and transparent management of public institutions which have emerged after the government's transparency package was revealed last week, data from Nielsen, a leading global information and measurement company, has revealed the amount of advertisements from state bodies published by pro-government newspapers reached record highs in 2014, despite them suffering from low sales figures. However, the outlets critical of the government which enjoyed high circulation were pushed to the bottom of the list in terms of the amount of ads purchased by state institutions.

Throughout last year the leading pro-government newspaper Sabah attracted advertisements from state enterprises and companies that are partly owned by the Turkish treasury such as Avea, Halkbank, Turk Telekom and Emlak Konut 21 times more than what the Zaman daily -- which has a 1 million circulation average a day, threefold that of Sabah's circulation -- had in the same period. The daily Star, another media outlet which publicly supports the government, had 16 times more advertisements from state institutions than Zaman was given.

The government unveiled a transparency package last week aiming at fighting against misconduct and fraud in state institutions in an environment where high state officials have long been criticized for wasting public funds, such as for example the state-owned Halkbank, which is in a financially risky position.

Turkey's highly circulated daily, Zaman, selling almost 1 million copies every day, received merely 5,897 columns centimeters in the first half of 2014 in ads from state bodies, and in addition to other critical gazettes such as Bugün, Sözcü, Yeni Asya, Milli Gazete and Cumhuriyet, it was not given any public advertising in the second half of the year. In a stark contrast to the past, the daily Hürriyet barely came in fifth place with its public ads totaling 56,000 columns centimeters. It was one of the most preferred newspapers for public ads by state institutions a year ago.

The Nielsen data shows that the daily Sözcü, one of the strongest dissent media organs against the government, published the least volume of public ads, with 214 columns centimeters despite its 338,000 copies circulated across the country every day.
State institutions bought advertising space in Bugün, another newspaper critical of the government, eight times less than in the daily Yeni Akit, one of the strongest supporters of the government. While Bugün has a daily circulation of 152,000, Akit sells only 60,000 copies a day.

According to Nielsen's data, top dailies that had the opportunity to publish the most public ads in 2014 were Sabah, with 124,000 columns centimeters; Star with 99,000 columns centimeters and Yeni Şafak with 65,000 columns centimeters. The circulation of these outlets were 318,000, 121,000 and 118,000 respectively. The report notes that state institutions gave an inexplicably high volume of advertisements to Sabah, Star, Yeni Şafak, Akşam, Takvim and Yeni Akit.

The pro-government newspapers have the most official denials or corrections for their misleading media reports among all newspapers in the country.

Meanwhile, the volume of public advertisements published in Sabah, Star, Yeni Şafak and Akşam -- who together have a 660,000 daily circulation -- surpassed the volume of that in 16 national newspapers, including Zaman, Hürriyet and Habertürk, who together have at least a 3.3 million circulation daily.

Ali Demirhisar, İstanbul (Cihan/Today's Zaman)