"Fast, but error-prone"

In a recent speech, the U.S. president referred to an alleged incident in Sweden - although nothing noteworthy happened in the country that evening. The mocking reaction came immediately via Twitter: "What was he smoking?" asked former Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.

An entertaining story that was also picked up by Swiss media. "Statements like Bildt's are simply presented to us by Twitter," says Thomas Benkö, deputy editor-in-chief of Blick Online and Blick am Abend. That's very practical, he says: "We can't imagine life without social media as a starting point for stories."

"Unfiltered from Trump's Brain."

This is especially true for stories about the new U.S. president. He tweets "unfiltered from his brain," as Benkö puts it. "Trump is probably the most powerful person to communicate so directly," also says Marcel Zulauf, a page-maker and member of the editorial board of 20 Minuten. "That's why his tweets carry weight for us."

Nevertheless, when Trump sends out a tweet, the entire editorial team doesn't "drop their pencils" right away. It depends on the content and the reactions whether 20 Minuten makes a story out of a tweet from the new US president. The same applies to the Blick media, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Tages Anzeiger.

The media's job is to decode Trump's messages, says Bernard Rappaz, editor-in-chief of news at RTS radio and television in western Switzerland.

For Rappaz, Trump's flood of tweets raises a fundamental problem: Are the statements an official position of the U.S. administration or a spontaneous personal comment? There is no definitive answer to this, he says. Journalists have to be careful and decide how to evaluate the tweets on a case-by-case basis.

Always verify information

For Iwan Städler, editorial director of the Tages-Anzeiger, the same applies to social media as to other sources: It must be checked where information comes from and whether it is correct.

On Twitter, information appears very quickly - but the channel is also very prone to errors, says Zulauf of 20 Minuten. He is very suspicious of social media as a source. A piece of information from Twitter or Facebook could serve as the starting point for a story, but it always needs at least confirmation from a second source. Benkö from Blick also says: The information disseminated must be verifiable and the source clear.

According to Zulauf, the situation is somewhat different when an authority tweets about a current event. The Munich police, for example, communicated very quickly via Twitter during last year's rampage. Zulauf sees Twitter as an enrichment for both authorities and journalists.

"It's always about the content, less about the form," says Städler of Tages Anzeiger. "Whether a politician announces his resignation via Twitter, in a speech or with a media release is irrelevant," he gives as an example.

The foreign department of the NZZ also says that tweets should not be given less weight than official communiqués, depending on the context. This is even more true for Trump than for other politicians.

Hardly any specific rules

Specific rules for dealing with information from social media have only been issued by a few of the media surveyed. This includes 20 Minuten; the employees of the free newspaper are trained and sensitized in this regard. The NZZ conducts regular training on the topic and has internal social media guidelines.

The SDA news agency has also supplemented its manual with information on how to deal with social media. The basic principles remain - as with other media - the confirmation of information and the verification of the source. If the information is confirmed from a reliable source, tweets or Facebook posts can also be the starting point for research for the agency. (Nadja Sutter and Alain Meyer, SDA)