Although media professionals constantly demand transparency from authorities, administrations and corporations, media organisations themselves are very reluctant to disclose key documents and data on key aspects regarding themselves. These concern ownership, key business figures, competitive conditions, wage structures, quality management and quality controls, compliance with media ethical standards, editorial statutes, equal wage and equality of opportunity, forms of advertising and advertising partnerships, jobs, corporate governance, offer or page and programme statistics, judgments of the press council, and so forth. A somewhat exaggerated formulation can be observed: everything we know about media is from the media corporations and their associations. All public data sources such as usage data from radio, television, newspapers, and online portals, circulation and reach figures for newspapers, are developed and produced by industry representatives. The preparation and modification of key figures is carried out in print or in consultation with dominant industry interests.
Not just media journalism, but also media politics as well as communication and media science rely in their publications and recommendations primarily on data produced and authorised by companies. The Federal Council’s advisory body, the Federal Media Commission (FMEC), consists mainly of members of media organisations and their associations, whose knowledge, views and insights tend to put industry interests first. In addition, communication and media studies, in particular, attempts to expand the publicly accessible knowledge that can be viewed and collected by means of content analyses, structural data or audience surveys. However, this can only be achieved selectively since representatives of media groups are themselves usually the information providers and, lack of transparency is part of the business model. The Medienmonitor Schweiz, a research project commissioned by the OFCOM to assess the Swiss media landscape with regard to the free formation of opinion, for example, does not record the ownership structure and the composition of the board of directors (Publicom, 2019).
Questions from the scientific community or media professionals whose answers are considered problematic from an entrepreneurial point of view remain unanswered or must, at best, be judged cautiously and critically. Although media professionals complain daily about companies and state administrations that are unwilling to provide information, the industry itself practices a rigorously restrained disclosure policy. Conversely, the few stocks of knowledge that are generated outside of corporate control are also prone to errors and, from an entrepreneurial and journalistic insider’s point of view, can easily be criticised and delegitimised. After all, since 2010 the fög has succeeded in publishing a yearbook on the quality of media, which has been criticised by the industry in recent years. However, research with a social science orientation is usually only taken note of by the industry if its results do not contradict the interests of the media industry or can be exploited in a journalistic way. The editor-in-chief of the high-reach commuter newspaper, for example, emphasises that his paper 20Minuten has not only become the largest private medium, “but according to a study by the Federal Office of Communications, has also become the most important for the formation of opinion in Switzerland” (Looser, 2020).
Knowledge about the media controls the industry and not politics or science. For example, both the Federal Council and the Parliament are currently putting together a package of measures to benefit newspaper publishers worth CHF 220 million without first clarifying the market and competitive situation. This obscures which regions there is sufficient, insufficient or even no journalistic coverage by classic daily newspapers or advertising-financed free sheets, not to mention the journalistic performance of digital news media in the region. The media journalist Nick Lüthi (2020) commented sceptically on the project:
In general, there seems to be a lack of relevant expertise in Parliament. This also became apparent during the debate on emergency aid for the radio industry. Even proven and self-proclaimed media politicians are not sufficiently aware of the market reality. It is, therefore, not surprising that, in cases of doubt, politicians rely on the tried and tested – in other words, on those media that regularly report on them. This is not a media policy suitable for the future.
