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The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
news contents have been evaluated inquiring for their effects on public space, contextually
within political economy approach.
Keywords: Critical political economy approach, new middle class, popular press, magazine
supplements, advertisement, advertorial news, public space, civil rights.
EVALUATING ADVERTORIAL NEWS THROUGH THE MAGAZINE
SUPPLEMENTS OF TURKISH PRESS IN TERMS OF CRITICAL
POLITICAL ECONOMY
Introduction
Advertorial news can be defined as giving the news in news format or in disguise of
news. However, it is not always possible to discern such content. Today, advertisement has
become a strategy used not only by advertiser business corporations but also by public
relations sector. The most important element in the background of this strategy is that
advertorial news is easy to distinguish. This is actually the target point of the media.
Facing the gravity of ethical and structural problem emerging with advertorial news, it
would be necessary to scrutinize the liberal commercial journalism as a whole and the
principles it abides by (objectivity in news, independent media, public responsibility,
corporate benefit and democratic function of the press). This problem of the media requires a
political economy relations analysis of media organizations in general and the social status of
journalism profession. In such a structure some journalists may become the cultural mediators
and producers of the ideological structure which hides itself beneath social power relations. In
that sense, it could be said that there are media employees in Turkish press that comply with
the new cultural mediator definition and these symbolic elites are part of the general
economic structure which manipulates the content.
In this study, advertorial news is analyzed through the contents of magazine
supplements. In Turkish media, advertisements and advertorial news, along with the sales
revenues from circulation, compose the primary sources of income for the gossip journalism.
In this context, the analysis of advertorial news published in daily magazine supplements of
monopolized press in terms of political economy of the media lays the problem of this study.
Two newspapers selected from the highly circulated ones published in June, 2009 in Turkey
have been sampled as the analysis unit of the study. Within a one-month period, the
advertorial news published in the weekend magazine supplements of Hürriyet and Akşam
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