The media industry itself has a news archive in which all published newspaper articles are accessible online for a fee. This documentation makes it possible to quantitatively record thematic focuses of the media at certain points in time. As far as daily newspapers are concerned, there is no publicly accessible data that might allow monitoring. The media industry focuses almost exclusively on usage, reach data, and circulation data according to Verband Schweizer Markt- und Sozialforschung [Association of Swiss Market and Social Research].
Tamedia (TX-Group) has additionally published a quality report on its media in 2017 and 2018. For reasons of feasibility, according to the author and former editor-in-chief of the Tages-Anzeiger Res Strehle, monitoring was limited to “a deep drilling in the journalistic offering of individual deadlines” (Strehle, 2018).
The Federal Office of Communications OFCOM may only deal with radio and television programme services. It commissions long-term programme analyses and studies on the power of opinion (including Publicom, 2019).
The SRG SSR publishes statistics on its radio and television programme services in its annual report. The programme statistics provide an overview of the programme content that was broadcast during the reporting year; this is represented in hours. It documents the diversity of content and shows the main focus areas of the respective radio programme services. In concrete terms, this means that 66 per cent music, 15 per cent current affairs and information, 5 per cent culture and education, 1 per cent sport and 7 per cent moderation and 5 per cent fall into the remaining categories. In the case of television, 37 per cent constituted current affairs and information, 23 per cent films and series, 14 per cent culture and education, 12 per cent sport, 3 per cent children’s programmes and 11 per cent entertainment and other programmes. The categories are published in great detail in the annual report, broken down by individual radio and television stations. The online programme statistics only show reach figures. SRG SSR’saudience councils also monitor individual programmes and public debates. These are, more or less independent advisory bodies which – in the individual language regions – focus on protecting values laid down by the political, legal and social structures of a democratic society. In fact, the Audience Council in German-speaking Switzerland, comprising a total of 26 members, divided into individual working groups, conducted 21 programme observations – mostly of specific programmes – in the past reporting year (SRG SSR, 2019).
The fög – Research Center for the Public Sphere and Society at the University of Zurich was set up with the aim of systematically observing and analysing communication events. Communication events are topics that vie for attention in public communication. Such communication events are investigated because fög considers public communication to be the most important medium for both steering and integrating our society. Since 2010, fög has been producing a yearbook entitled Qualität der Medien [Media quality]. According to its own statements, the aim of the yearbooks is to strengthen quality awareness on the part of the audience, media professionals, publishing management, and publishers (Imhof, 2010). Specifically, the reporting quality of professional information media and their resources, the journalistic diversity or media concentration and the changed media consumption are key areas of analyses (fög, 2019).
Expectedly, all large companies, associations, and administrative units monitor the coverage of daily and specialist media in order to proactively influence the media coverage or to counteract undesired media publicity. There are a number of specialised firms which, by means of strategic consulting and public relations work, try to achieve the sovereignty of interpretation in specific problem areas and decision-making powers in the interest of wealthy clients. The aim is to create such content and messages in fragmented sub-publics with which their clients are heard and associated. This media work is, above all, about attracting the attention of media professionals: what exactly does the strategic consultant as an intermediary mean by this, Andrés Luther recently explained in an interview in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung NZZ (Scheu & Schoenenberger, 2020: 14):
We absorb the momentum, react and achieve impact with controlled explosions. [And] if a situation develops and it has a certain relevance, if it is clear that journalists are interested and if, in addition, there is a possibility that they lose control of the sovereignty of interpretation – then I have a chance. I am in contact with journalists, I know who is interested in what, what the positions are. At the right moment, I give them the topic.
