Do we really understand the young?

My twenty or so students in this journalism class were looking bored and frustrated. Most of them were not even looking at me; they were deeply into their morning Twitter searches, which offered much more interesting options than my insistence to analyze Turkey's current news agenda. The subject of the class was news writing and, in particular, the formulas of compiling news bulletins: How you choose news, where do you find it, how you evaluate it, how you verify it, in which order do you place it, how you keep accuracy and fairness, etc. All that, for an exercise of a five-minute news bulletin. Difficult stuff, even for professional journalists these days in Turkey.
 
Admittedly, it was a difficult day for news: Just six days after the Ankara bombing, with conflicting news about the identity of the bombers, strong statements by the government against the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), conflicting information about Syria and the Russian attack on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). On top, issues with the EU regarding the refugee crisis plus, of course, the ongoing election campaign in its last phase. 

In vain, I tried to lift the interest of my audience by highlighting the "fun" aspect of trying to catch fresh news, "the fresher, the better," etc. Nothing worked. The exception was the ever-interested and energetic Erasmus students who, since the beginning of the semester in October, had familiarized themselves with Turkey's news-rich environment. Some were already reporting for their countries' local media. But on that day, the rest of the class was refusing to follow my enthusiasm of how interesting would be to be in the news business at this moment of history in Turkey and to carry out the responsibility of informing the public...