100,000 Swiss francs: Press Council saved for the time being
The activities of the Swiss Press Council, the complaints body for media ethics issues, are secured for the time being until the end of 2023 thanks to a financial rescue ring. The Board of Trustees is making a one-time injection of CHF 100,000. This gives the media ethics body time to find solutions for longer-term financing.
This gives the media ethics body time to find solutions for longer-term funding. The lifeline was made necessary by the rejection of the media funding package by the electorate in February, as the Press Council announced on Wednesday at its annual media conference. As a result, urgently needed funding for the complaints body has become a distant prospect.
The one-time CHF 100,000 was granted by the board of trustees of the six sponsoring organizations, which is responsible for financing, in order to be able to maintain the free services of the Press Council in the accustomed quality. According to the Press Council, the Swiss Media Publishers Association and SRG SSR made significant contributions to the solution.
Fundraising and Benefactors Association
Foundation Board President Martina Fehr explained that the search for funds for a sustainable financial foundation is continuing. To this end, the Press Council is pushing ahead with fundraising and a patrons' association is being set up. The aim is to use the funds generated in this way to realize projects for which the regular budget is not sufficient and thus to strengthen the work of the Press Council.
The Press Council's financial and personnel resources are designed for 80 complaints a year. Since 2017, however, it has sometimes been confronted with twice as many, as its president Susan Boos showed. In 2021, for example, it dealt with 197 complaints, a record.
Support for the Press Council was part of the uncontroversial part of the heavily criticized media promotion bill. Up to 23 million francs more than the current 5 million would have been earmarked for the Press Council, training and continuing education, news agencies such as Keystone-SDA and media IT projects, among other things.
Broadly supported
The Press Council is broadly based. The sponsoring organizations of its foundation are the journalism professional association Impressum, the media unions Syndicom and Syndikat Schweizer Medienschaffende (SSM), the Conference of Editors-in-Chief, the Swiss Media Publishers Association and SRG SSR. The number of representatives is determined by the amount of the contribution.
In addition, Vice President Max Trossmann announced his resignation on Wednesday after 23 years on the body. The Press Council also recalled that almost exactly 50 years ago - on June 17, 1972 - the "Declaration of the Duties and Rights of Journalists" was adopted. The work of the ethics body is based on these guidelines.
On the occasion of the annual media conference, the Press Council also presented its new Yearbook presented. It contains the annual report with leading decisions as well as facts and figures from the past year. Another article answers the question of whether it was permissible to conduct undercover research inside a group of opponents of the Corona measures.
