Chasing Squirrels on the Web
Recently, Turkish courts shut down YouTube because it hosted videos that insulted Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Instead of YouTube, a page appeared that explained the site had been closed down by order of the courts. Before long, YouTube was back. Some of this was undoubtedly due to the enormous outrage that ensued at blocking such a popular site and the international embarrassment, but also the tricky nature of trying to control the content of something as slippery and omnipresent as The Web, or tracking one video among the millions on YouTube. It’s like trying to herd squirrels.
Banning is an old-fashioned practice that may no longer work for certain media. In previous decades, Turkish courts have often stepped in to ban television shows or magazines that step over the bounds of what they are allowed to say. Recently, the courts convicted an editor of a venerable popular magazine (a bit like Time magazine) of reporting on some of the very same things now coming out in the Ergenekon arrests. The magazine was put under such pressure that it closed. Magazines and newspapers are easy targets because they have editors, locations, offices, printing presses. But television, radio and the Internet are harder to close down. In the 1980s, the courts closed down a popular TV program for reporting on government corruption. The station filmed the police arriving, their conversations with the program hosts, their attempts to lock the door. Crowds of people who had been following the incident live on TV surrounded the building . Reporters with microphones circled the crowd asking what they thought of this. The station filmed the police being brought in as backup and tried to interview them too. Finally, on screen live, the program hosts left the set, the door was bolted. Within minutes, the program was back on the air, using another station’s broadcast facilities.
This was the time when Turkey’s media became deregulated, not because the government let loose the reins, but because new technology no longer allowed them to hold them as tightly. People had satellite TV and cable. Programs were beamed in from abroad. For the very first time, the Turkish military became the subject of a humorous skit on television. The skit showed the Turkish army trying to carry out a coup. They closed down one radio station, then another, then another. There were so many that they were unable to shut them all down and, thus, the coup failed. (Why aren’t we laughing?)