The Young Turks

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One of the

Pundits

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And a dirty dozen more

The Young Turks, or TYT, is an online news show dedicated to liberal politics and pop culture topics created by pundit Cenk Uygur.

The Young Turks is broadcast in various media, as a radio program in 2002, and as a television program on MSNBC which now airs on CurrentTV.[1]

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[edit] Meaningful content

The Young Turks is openly progressive in its politics, and devotes much time to criticizing the high-handedness of the GOP. TYT's commentators have also been extremely critical of the Obama administration, decrying its conciliatory attitude towards the GOP.[2]

Uygur and company are also highly critical of the American "War on Drugs."[3]

[edit] Less-than-meaningful content

The Young Turks caters to a youthful demographic, and cover topics of prurient interest. Uygur and his production staff spend a lot of time talking about sex. As TYT is expanding, they are shunting the silly stuff to other "channels."[4]

[edit] Political activities

Although journalists should report news, not make news, The Young Turks promotes Uygur's political action committee, known as "Wolf PAC." Its declared goal is to reduce the role of money in the political process.[5][6]

[edit] Armenian Genocide shiftiness

TYT host Cenk Uygur, who is Turkish-American, has been accused of denying the Armenian Genocide, something that members of the Armenian-American community protested over as recently as February 2012,[7] based on two articles written in 1999[8] and 1991.[9] His co-host Ana Kasparian (Armenian-American herself) defended him on Twitter in 2010 saying "that op-ed is from 11 years ago" and "people change their political opinions all the time."[10]

Additionally, the program shares its name with the Turkish regime which had overseen the Armenian Genocide. Uygur has stated it was based on the dictionary definition meaning "young progressives looking to overthrow an established system," though he did not directly address his past writings.[11] Note that dictionaries also list the historical Turkish regime as the origin of the term; this meaning is what offends some Armenians.[12] Given his Turkish background, it seems unlikely that Uygur would be unaware of the historical regime and its connection to the Armenian Genocide.

In 2013 during a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" session Cenk again refused to clarify his position, despite the fact that the most upvoted question was regarding the Genocide.[13]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

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