WORLD'S UPSIDE DOWN - BAD NEWS!

A "Dinosaur" composition from my "progressive" days. Originally a reflection of the cosmopolitan make up of the city of Istanbul, but - NOW -- Re-recorded due to "impulse" knee-jerk reactions to prevailing "headline-grabbing" domestic affairs here in Turkey, concerning the "cowing of the free press"!

Brief:
A] June 2nd 2013 - While masses of protesters battled police armed with tear gas bombs in Istanbul Saturday, the CNN-Turk television channel chose instead to air an episode of Spy in the Huddle, a three-part documentary on PENGUINS!!! At some point, the channel cut to a news bulletin. It lasted maybe all of 5 minutes, featured a few sound bytes from ruling party officials, a few shots of the protests, and no word from the Demonstrators themselves. Overnight, the penguin became a symbol of all that was wrong with the Turkish press.

The broadcast poured lighter fluid on online accusations of a countrywide media blackout over riots in Taksim Square, where demonstrators protested a government initiative to turn a park into a shopping center an Ottoman style army barracks. These protests soon began to embrace growing discontent with the ideological / theological direction and growing authoritarianism of which the government was showing a leaning towards.
The root cause for the "gagged" or "bundled away" press / journalists appears to be that Media outlets have been taken over by businessmen with close ties to the ruling Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish acronym, AKP). The real problem in Turkey is that all mainstream media, sympathetic to the AKP or not, have little choice but to be on good terms with the powers that be.

B] Overall freedom of the press and diversity of opinion have been in jeopardy in Turkey, and not just since the current unrest began some two weeks ago. After years of persecution, no other country in the world -- not even China or Iran -- has more journalists in prison than Turkey. It's an embarrassing world record