Journalists are becoming the part of the problem being unhelpful to democratic development.

Yavuz Baydar, Readers Representative, Sabah daily, Turkey was one of the speakers at Speak UP!2 conference that took place on 20 June in Brussels.

Biography:

Yavuz Baydar is a Turkish journalist who has been active in journalism for almost 34 years. He writes opinion columns on Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy for the daily Today’s Zaman. He is also an active blogger for Al-Monitor and The Huffington Post on a variety of topics such as Turkish domestic politics, the Middle East, the Balkans, human rights, free speech and press freedom. Baydar started his career as producer and news presenter for the Swedish radio and television before moving on to become the Scandinavia and Baltics correspondent for the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet from 1980-1992. In the early 1990's he worked for the BBC World Service. In 1999, Baydar became Turkey’s first news ombudsman. He is also the Reader Representative for the daily Sabah where he responds to readers' complaints about content and comments on media ethics. From 2003-2004, Baydar served as president of the U.S. based International Organizaton of News Ombudsmen (ONO). He is a member of the World Editors Forum (WEF) and the Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ).