Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Letter to Mr Erdogan: "Worried by your health, Mr President"

To: President Erdogan, [xxx]
Subject: Worried by your health, Mr President

Dear Mr President, I am deeply worried about your health after reading the version of your words that the New York Times published a couple of days ago (
On Monday, he took another swipe at the United States, saying, “Our country does not envy the soil of others.”

“When the operation achieves its aims, it would be over,” Mr. Erdogan told a group of businessmen in the presidential palace. “Some, or America, are asking us about the duration. And I am asking America, ‘Was your timing determined in Afghanistan?’ When the job is done. We are not eager to stay. We know when to pull out. And we do not care to have permission from anyone to do this.”

The lack of temperance, absent care with words, acute exhibition of lack of respect for the US and the US President, the null fear for consequences, show that the rumors that you reached a harsh deterioration of mental health are almost a certainty.

Pending a psychiatric evaluation, once we reached this point, to be of help to everyone involved, the people, the peace, the region's stability, the many lives involved, shouldn't be a good decision to leave power?

Those who review your speeches seem not to be really helpful, since comments like those above were, in the end, spoken.

Courage, Mr President! We all must know when to retire. Your age (in this specific case) and your poor decisions (like the the bad advisors you chose) seem to counsel your leaving the great office of the presidency for the many young and capable people that can do a better job for the people and the country.

May I suggest some spa in the Crimea? Or if you like not-so-warm weather, maybe a dacha in the mountains near Sochi, to have good laughs with the Great Statesman Mr Putin while having tea.

Best Regards,

[phone, e-mail, other data]

Mediatization and the Disproportionate Attention to Negative News. The case of airplane crashes

Mediatization and the Disproportionate Attention to Negative News. The case of airplane crashes. Toni G. L. A. van der Meer, Anne C. Kroon, Piet Verhoeven & Jeroen Jonkman. Journalism Studies,

Abstract: Do news media increasingly portray a distorted world image when reporting menace? The purpose of this study is to investigate how media attention for negative incidents evolves over time and how this relates to real-world trends and public responses. A longitudinal content analysis (1991–2015) of media coverage of aviation incidents is used to provide a systematic investigation into the trends of media attention related to real-world data. Results show that while the total number of aviation incidents declined across time, relative media attention increased. Time series analysis revealed that media attention for these negative incidents was negatively associated with shifts in public responses—i.e. air travel behavior—whereas real-world statistics on aviation incidents did not seem to explain variation in public behavior. Moreover, when exploring the variation in the coverage of media attention, increasing presence of mediatization facets was observed as a potential explanation for the over-time rise in disproportional attention to negative news. In conclusion, news media may have a blind spot for progression and a distorted media reality can be a predictor of public responses instead of reality itself.

KEYWORDS: mediatization, negative news, news media logics, public responses, time series analysis