Institutions in Switzerland that monitor and analyse the performance and role of the news media are the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy, and Communications and the OFCOM, also responsible for monitoring the performance of Swiss radio and television. As an external supervisory body, OFCOM accompanies the development of radio and television in Switzerland on the basis of the law on radio and television. It does not carry out any research of its own, as it is not allowed to systematically observe or directly control media content. Therefore, OFCOM regularly awards research contracts worth millions of euros to commercial and public research institutes in order to survey and examine the current media developments in radio and television.
SRG SSR is legally obliged to outsource audience research to the independent research foundation Mediapulse, which is responsible for what is ultimately unbiased and neutral audience research. This also includes the measurement of television audience figures, regardless of the broadcasting technology used.
There has been a sharp reduction in media criticism. In contrast to the printed press, SRG SSR continues to strive to address current events in the media landscape on its radio and television channels. This is all the more in the public interest as the Federal Council is seeking to increase financial support for the commercial daily press. Although the publishers also regard subsidiary media funding as a problematic encroachment on entrepreneurial freedom of the media and the press, they do not oppose the Federal Council’s funding programme in view of the promised financial support.
Corporate and editorial self-control as a form of quality control is a little more than a crutch for the lack of “control of the controllers”. The self-organisation of the media’s ethical responsibility or journalistic quality control in everyday work is divided into two levels. In editorial offices and publishing houses, internal guidelines are issued by the company, for example in the form of editorial statutes. At the industry level, a press codex “Declaration of the Duties and Rights of Journalists” has existed since the 1970s.
The Swiss Press Council is responsible for self-regulation of professional ethical standards. According to its own information, the Press Council has made 83 decisions in 2019 – more than ever before in its over forty-year history. However, a record of 127 complaints were received in 2017, and 215 and 126 lodged in 2018 respectively. Of these, six complaints were fully upheld last year.
By joining sponsorship of the “Swiss Press Council” foundation, both publishers and radio and television broadcasters, including SRG, as well as professional associations and trade unions recognise the Swiss Press Council as a “body of self-regulation for the editorial section of the media” (Schweizer Presserat, 2020). The competence of the Swiss Press Council extends to all forms of distribution, all media and also to journalistic content published individually, for example in the form of a blog, an online platform or when media professionals express their professional opinions via Twitter or Facebook.
Markus Spillmann, former editor-in-chief of the NZZ and current president of the “Swiss Press Council” foundation board, addresses at least three fundamental problems in the 2019 issue, namely a structural deficit in the financing of the Press Council, a gap between aspirations and reality and incomplete self-regulation. He also notes that the Press Council’s judgments and rulings are hardly taken into account in everyday editorial work and that the Press Council is not present in the general public (Schweizer Presserat, 2019). The President of the Press Council, also a former editor-in-chief from Geneva, criticises the unwillingness of media professionals to admit their own mistakes and errors. In addition, a majority of editors usually footnote their guilty verdict at the bottom of the column or leave it out altogether.
Probably the biggest problem of the Code of Ethics and the Press Council is that its regulations are not legally binding. For example, a journalist can be dismissed for an article that did not comply with the internal rules, even if he or she did not violate the Code of Ethics. Furthermore, the personal and institutional proximity of representatives of leading media to elites from politics and business is not problematised (e.g., Krüger, 2013). Some time ago, Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer described the media as courtesans who would always move close to power (Maurer, 2013). In addition to power-centred and elitist journalism, even simple-minded, fondness-serving, uncritical, trivialising or missing contributions are unenforceable or media ethically reprehensible.
