Media organisations strive for pluralism. Their editorial statutes should ensure that different views are brought to bear and reported from different perspectives. However, the diversity in newsrooms leaves much to be desired.
As a consequence of social media, the leading Swiss news media created possibilities for feedback, but still hesitate to incorporate the participation of media users actively in the news process.
Although there are many measures and instruments for corporate and editorial self-organisation, they contribute little to media accountability of companies and journalists.
Although there is a code of ethics formulated by the Swiss Press Council, it has only a limited effect in the everyday life of journalists.
Efforts to monitor the media in Switzerland on a regular basis are institutionalised in OFCOM. Supervision is carried out on a regular basis, but of the broadcasting media.
Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world, and its mass media is relatively cheap and affordable for almost everybody. But “over-information” on the Internet is a factor for certain people, who don’t want to pay anymore for journalistic media products.
Swiss linguistic minorities are well served by the Swiss mass media. The public broadcaster SRG SSR guarantees that all official languages and cultures are covered with information. And some alternative media exist as well. But there is still almost no special media for minorities with migrant backgrounds.
The diversity of different media products as well as different formats of news presentation is still sufficient. But there are clear tendencies towards a stronger orientation on reader interests, with more tabloidisation of news, especially in the print media.
The strong concentration of newspapers at regional level has increased significantly. Moreover, almost all private regional radio and television stations are owned by the dominant media groups.
Only a few media companies dominate the print media market in the four language regions, while the public service broadcaster SRG SSR leads the electronic sector in all language regions.
The Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM) is a research project from The Euromedia Research Group. This is a network of researchers that collects and exchanges information that help to describe and analyse developments in media structure and policy in Europe.
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