An essential feature of Switzerland is its ethnic and linguistic diversity. Multilingualism dominates and determines the media landscape. Daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, magazines, radio, and television programmes are available not only for the dominant German language region, but for the small French, Italian, and Romansh parts of Switzerland as well. The national broadcaster SRG SSR (2020a) is obliged by law to provide programmes that reflect and preserve the linguistic and cultural diversity of the country. Radio and television programmes are produced in all four official languages. It has six studios in Zurich, Bern, Basel, Geneva, Lausanne, and Lugano as well as four other regional studios in Aarau, Chur, Lucerne, and St. Gall produce 16 radio and seven television channels.
In order to finance radio and television in the four language regions, the SRG has to compensate for costs so that equivalent and high-quality programmes can be broadcast in all parts of the country. 37 per cent of the fee revenue comes from German-speaking Switzerland, which receives only 43 per cent of it. French Switzerland receives 33 per cent, Italian Switzerland 22 per cent and Rhaeto-Romance Switzerland 2 per cent of the revenues. All language groups benefit by the financial compensation, except the German-speaking Switzerland, which acts as a donor region.
In contrast to the plentiful news offerings for its language communities, Switzerland still does not have a policy on how to provide media services to its significant community of immigrants. The SRG SSR is making some efforts in this regard. However, the importance this leading media conglomerate attaches to this issue is quite inadequate. A recent study shows that only 6.4 per cent of all media contributions (SRG SSR radio and television programs as well as private commercial radio programs) deal with minorities with a migrant background (Bonfadelli, 2017).
Minority, alternative and community media, non-commercial and participatory, comprise a heterogeneous field of public service from the bottom. They are important as platforms for the expression, discussion, and exchange of generally marginalised segments of a society (Retis, 2019). There are alternative, non-profit-oriented media products in Switzerland, for example the left-wing weekly WOZ (www.woz.ch) with a paid circulation of around 18,000 copies or radio stations such as the non-commercial Radio LORA or Radio RaBe. Journalists working for such alternative media do so for deep (uniform) wages. Alternative media will struggle even harder if it is not subsidised in the current Covid-19 crisis. In January 2018, the digital magazine Republik, which deals with reports from politics, business, culture and society, was founded by six former press journalists and financed by crowdfunding. The journalistically demanding and elite platform is financed by around 18,650 subscribers (January 2020) and crowdfunding. Just one to three posts are posted online at five o’clock in the morning.
Although people with a migrant background make up almost 35 per cent of the Swiss population, there is almost no print media in their languages of origin (e.g., La pagina in Italian or Arkada in Turkish), but only several Internet platforms, such as africalink.ch for migrants from African countries, albinfo.ch for migrants from Albania, arkadas.ch, a platform combined with a newspaper for migrants from Turkey, www.espanoles.ch in Spanish, www.brasilflashtv.com in Portuguese and www.chevere.ch in Spanish, for migrants from South America. The Internet platform migesmedia.ch of the Swiss Red Cross connects and lists the migrant media in Switzerland. Several empirical studies on migrants and the media in Switzerland document how migration and migrants are only a peripheral issue in the Swiss media (Bellardi, 2016). It is, therefore, not surprising that migrants do not get involved in the mainstream media.
From an international perspective, it can be said that there are print and radio offerings for minorities to varying dimensions in almost all European countries, but hardly in Iceland, Belgium (Flanders), Italy or Portugal, and is usually only a niche phenomenon with a limited reach, as in Switzerland, which occupies a medium position. Finally, public service broadcasting is obliged to offer programmes for (linguistic) minorities in all countries as well as in Switzerland. There are also media platforms for minorities on the Internet. But minorities, and especially immigrants, tend to have little presence in mainstream media coverage, except in the context of elections or political conflicts.
