Hürriyet to raise gender awareness

GAZİANTEP - Hürriyet

Hürriyet Gazetecilik Chairwoman Vuslat Doğan Sabancı.

Turkish media should be more careful about the language it uses in stories regarding women, Vuslat Doğan Sabancı, the chairwoman of Hürriyet Gazetecilik, has said.

“We, as Hürriyet, are running several thorough social responsibility projects,” Sabancı said yesterday at a meeting in the southeastern province of Gaziantep. “We have also recently added a special article to our publishing principles.”

Hürriyet would take the lead in Turkish media to raise awareness on women’s and children’s rights, Sabancı also said.

The chairwoman said a special article in the new publishing principles read: “Hürriyet takes the side of women’s and children’ rights. Physically and mentally harming and discriminative stories against women and children cannot be published.”

The Hürriyet chairwoman also said a campaign will be launched against discriminative stories or headlines, such as “Female driver crashes car.”

Recalling the Righteous Woman Platform, which was founded after Güldünya Tören was murdered by her family, Sabancı highlighted the social responsibility campaign run by the Doğan Group.

“We launched serious campaigns to support women in their participation in politics,” she said. “We mobilized nearly 50 nongovernmental organizations in just one week and gave a message on equality in Parliament.”

Speaking at the same meeting, Professor Bengi Semerci said many male writers showed women as flower-like, fragile individuals that need to be taken care of. “I am a human being, not a flower,” she said.