Anadolu Agency



Anadolu Agency - Right BiasRIGHT BIAS


Factual Reporting: MIXED
World Press Freedom Rank: Turkey 157/180

Notes: Anadolu Agency or AA, launched in 1920 and was originally founded by Halide Edip Adıvar, Yunus Nadi Abalıoğlu. It is the official state-subsidized news agency of Turkey. Anadolu Agency is based in Tandoğan, Ankara, Turkey. Şenol Kazancı is the CEO and Mustafa Fuat ER is the Editor.

Anadolu Agency is generally referred to as being pro government. For example, in this article, Anadolu Agency is praised by the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Founder of the right wing populist party AKP (Justice and Development Party).

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 2018 World Press Freedom Index ranks Turkey 157 out of 180 countries. Reporters Without Borders says “Turkey is again the world’s biggest prison for professional journalists.”

A Bellingcat article states that “AA as a whole can only be considered as blatant and deliberate twisting and distorting of the facts.”

In review, Anadolu Agency utilizes moderately loaded emotional language in their headlines such as “Merkel slams Trump for ‘harming’ global order” and “Erdogan slams world for ‘failure’ in Jerusalem test”. Anadolu Agency also poorly sources as they typically source by heavily quoting without linking to the actual story.

Overall, we rate Anadolu Agency Right Biased editorially and Mixed factually due to poor sourcing. Further, this is an agency controlled by the right wing ruling party and therefore has a very strong pro-government state bias. (M. Huitsing 5/25/2018)