In his book on the development of journalism in liberal, deliberative, and participatory democracy, the American communications scientist Seong Jae Min distinguishes three journalism models, each with a dominant objective (Min, 2018). Of these, in the “trustee” model of liberal democracy, information is at the centre. The professional journalist primarily provides the inhabitants with information on self-organisation and self-management and works on behalf of civil society. Such a focused role of journalism is controversial in this country.
According to Drüeke (2018), the “guardian role”of media is emphasised, since control is seen as central to the media, along with information and transparency and thus legitimisation of political processes. Publicity is produced in different ways: from “below” from the perspective of the governed, in which the attitudes and opinions of citizens are presented, or from “above”, in other words the fulfilment of the provision of information from the perspective of the governed. In these production mechanisms of publicity, the media are central as critical observers (Drüeke, 2018). To put it bluntly, this means that media professionals act as watchdogs who warn civil society as soon as important decisions are pending, or something gets out of hand. The concept of watchdogs in the form of investigative journalism and at the same time as a central public task of media is not based on a uniform understanding of what functions and forms such watchdog media have and what is meant by them (Drüeke, 2018).
The role of the press as a permanent observer of the state executive, legislative, and judicial branches is also a widespread notion in Switzerland as the stronghold of an economic liberal democracy. It is based on the assumption that the media and media professionals are autonomous and have sufficiently institutionalised and legitimised powers to act as a quasi, fourth power in the state, keeping the other three power holders in check in certain areas with regard to their accountability and their potential for abuse of power. This takes the form of neutral and systematic reporting and discussion of democracy-relevant issues, events, procedures, and trends, so that civil society can deal with all risks and damage that has occurred in good time. As attractive as this narrative may be, the fact is that the self-proclaimed journalistic watchdogs exercise their autonomy in very different ways. There are watchdogs who observe from places where there is little to see and observe. Other watchdogs, on the other hand, reject this role because they neither want to do investigative work nor “bark” or “bite”. There are also media organisations that do without expensive watchdogs altogether or use them as “attack dogs”, as actual weapons, not always in the interest of civil society but also in their own corporate and political interests, or even, in the interests of third parties. In which or whose interest watchdogs are renounced and where the watchdogs are used observe, bark, attack or bite, often remains in the dark.
If one dares to compare these role models with the understanding of the roles of privately organised newspaper journalists and SRG radio journalists in Switzerland, the majority of media professionals here favour the following role models: “Reporting things as they are” (94% and 91%), “being an impartial observer” (82% and 86%) and “classifying and analysing current events” (83% and 95%). “Communicating political information” as a role perception is affirmed by 71 per cent of newspaper journalists and 79 per cent of radio journalists. 58 per cent and 55 per cent respectively want to “give people the opportunity to articulate their views” and also pursue participatory objectives. 53 per cent and 60 per cent want to “communicate the world in stories as storytellers”.
Taking note of these results of a relatively recent survey of media professionals, one finds that the role of observation, depiction, mediation, analysis, and classification continues to dominate in Switzerland as well. Discursive and participatory understanding of roles follows at a distance. In contrast, only 52 per cent of newspaper journalists want to “control the government”, compared to 45 per cent of SRG radio journalists (Hanitzsch et al., 2019: 312). Only a clear minority of 39 per cent of press journalists want to “control the economy”, compared to 37 per cent of radio journalists. The watchdog model mentioned at the beginning only enjoys support among a minority of the media professionals surveyed. The investigative, power-critical watchdog function, as a professional role model, does not seem to show promise in gaining a majority.
