While news sources could mean sources used in news coverage or the handling of news sources in the editorial offices, it should also be kept in mind that in view of the increasing search for news and their use via search engines on the Internet, it would also be necessary to analyse how diverse the news sources found in this way are.
For a long time, news agencies such as the Schweizerische Depeschenagentur (SDA) or Deutsche Presse-Agentur in Germany, on the one hand, and correspondents of leading media organisations, on the other, were the most important sources of news. Leading media organisations in Switzerland still rely on a variety of news sources. However, it must be mentioned that journalists are increasingly using the Internet for their stories and neglecting investigations outside the newsroom.
Switzerland has had only one national news agency since 2010, the SDA. It sells material to most media organisations in three languages. In 2018, the SDA also integrated the picture agency Keystone, but reduced its staff due to declining revenues. According to our interviewed media experts, Keystone-SDA has lost ground as a leading news source; for example, CH Media has even cancelled its SDA subscription. And agency texts marked with the acronym SDA are usually only placed as isolated short messages or used as a trigger for additional research, besides original and named reports and interviews as well as contributions and comments from guest authors.
In addition, the concentration of Swiss media into three leading print media houses, – Tamedia (TX Group), NZZ Media Group, and the new CH Media – together with staff reductions over the last twenty years, has led to reports from the same media company being taken as a reference or source. And the strengthening of the international cooperation of the leading Swiss press with foreign newspapers such as the Tages-Anzeiger with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, or the NZZ with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany, led to reduced diversity of news sources. Furthermore, the introduction of so-called integrated newsrooms also stimulated the use of external sources of information for multiple print titles.
Diversity, thus, suffers from cooperation between various newspapers and their news editors. Over the years, content syndication has also become commonplace at different levels. Newspapers take over entire sections or single articles from other newspapers. At the level of national news and more so in international news, performance of most newspapers has declined. Readers receive the same news about national or international politics in almost all newspapers. This reduction in diversity in media content was measured by an “Analysis of Unique Items” that said only 62 per cent of the national political news articles of the twelve main newspapers analysed in the German part of Switzerland were “unique” (38% of articles analysed had appeared in at least two newspapers) (fög, 2019: 20).
Today, only a few publishing companies can afford regional offices in Switzerland as well as foreign correspondents. The public broadcasting corporation SRG SSR, however, still maintains their regional offices and, along with quality newspaper NZZ, continues to rely on foreign correspondents.
Meanwhile, the working pressure and constraints have increased dramatically in the current media crisis (Puppis et al., 2014; Hofstetter, 2017). This forces journalists to opt for the growing supply of public relations (PR) material from different stakeholders more easily. Thus, powerful actors from politics and business bring their interests into the media without difficulty (e.g., Grossenbacher, 2010: 133f.).
Although supply of PR material has grown exponentially in recent times, most journalists interviewed, presumably also for self-protection, said they believed this had limited or no influence on their own journalistic works, and that they would themselves be very critical of PR material. However, it is indeed a problem that the increasing sponsored content in the form of so-called “Publireportage” or “Sponsored Content” is regularly produced and published in many newspapers as a source of revenue. Moreover, external comments from outside stakeholders are increasingly being placed in leading news media.
Similar trends have also been observed in our international comparison. In general, diversity of news sources has decreased. Moreover, importance of news agencies in small and medium-sized countries has declined slightly since our interviews, and cooperation and exchange between syndicated leading news media have intensified. It should also be noted that the content of news agencies is usually not taken “one-to-one” but are often used only as triggers for additional original research.
