SRG offer to private individuals meets with skepticism from associations
The stakeholders did not exactly react with exuberant enthusiasm on Friday to SRG's offer to make content available to private media. The publishers' association wants to take a closer look. The journalists' association fears a cutback.
As of today, private providers can obtain video contributions "in the news area" free of charge from SRG and use and commercialize them on the Internet as they wish.
The journalists' association Imprint considers SRG's offer to share content with private media to be dangerous. This would give the private media the wrong incentive to reduce their own journalistic production. They would then be more likely to use the budget for offerings that they don't get for free from SRG, such as entertainment.
Already today, cooperation and concentration among private media providers would severely limit diversity. The SRG is accelerating this development.
The surprising introduction of the offer as of Friday without consultation of the journalism industry is additionally irritating, Imprint managing director Urs Thalmann is quoted in the communiqué. "The news agency SDA is responsible and sufficient for basic journalistic information for the benefit of all media," he announced.
Publishers demand restraint from SRG
There was no cry of joy from the publishers' association either. Andreas Häuptli, managing director of Schweizer Medien, sees some concession on the part of SRG. They will now take a close look at it. Nobody had actually thought of ready-made contributions, as SRG is now offering them.
Rather, he said, publishers wanted raw material that editors could prepare according to their own needs. Offering the technology for a channel without a label is interesting at most for smaller companies; the larger ones already have their technology, he continued.
The private media still expected a certain restraint from the SRG. The publishers would raise the paywall on the Internet. As a fee-financed company, SRG cannot compete on a 1:1 scale with free information, said Häuptli. (SDA/hae)
