EVALUATING THE SINCERITY OF TURKISH MEDIA CONCERNING THE STRUGGLE AGAINST SUBSTANCE USE AND ADDICTION: THE “BARON” DISCOURSE

Özet

This study questions the sincerity of Turkish media concerning its support for the struggle againstsubstance use and addiction within the framework of the concept “baron” and aims to reveal withwhich lingual and discourse-related strategies the concept of “baron” is circulated. In this scope, newsabout people who smuggle a massive amount of drugs, published between January-November 2006 onthe websites of the three top-seller newspapers, Hürriyet, Sözcü, and Sabah, are analyzed within theframework of the critical discourse analysis developed by Teun A. Van Dijk. The results of theanalysis reveal that the news about people who smuggle drugs and who are named as “barons” by theTurkish media are transferred to the reader with an encouraging and exaggerated use of language, thatdrug trafficking is represented as a quite lucrative and adventurous profession which providesopportunities 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 puttingthe emphasis on individual success stories of barons, the magnitude of smuggling, how cunning thesmugglers are, how they could escape from prison or how they lived in their ordinary lives. While themedia uses the term “poison merchant” even for kids who are pushed to criminal activities concerningnarcotics/stimulants, the preference of the concept “baron” when it’s about people who engage inmassive amounts of drug trafficking reveals a necessity to question the media’s sincerity concerningthe struggle against substance use and addiction.