Emancipated consumers
Oliver Classen on the positive aspects of the complaints boom.
Oliver Classen on the positive aspects of the complaints boom.
The two self-regulatory bodies of the Swiss media industry are groaning under "an almost unmanageable workload": both the Fairness Commission and the Press Council recently stated that advertising and newspaper consumers have a veritable appetite for complaints - this is the price of the public attention that the two bodies have sought. This prompts Weltwoche to ask anxiously about the "degeneration" of our (thesis) journalism. And the NZZ suspects that the increasingly intrusive battle for attention in advertisements and articles is making media consumers more irritable.
Both interpretations sound plausible, but fall short and also lead down a false, culturally pessimistic path. Reflexive variations of the industry mantra "decline in quality" immerse the new willingness to protest in a gloomy fog rather than in the clarifying light of the present. One of its key developments and achievements is the seizure of power by customers and buyers - catalyzed by the Internet with its transparency and interactivity.
This new self-confidence clearly does not stop at the consumption of print products and the advertising that finances them. And that is a good thing. Because critical, committed and defensive readers, who no longer put up with every provocation and speculation, are an effective and valuable corrective for our rapidly and sometimes hollowly spinning media system. Those who grumble think for themselves - and in the medium term may be prepared to pay a little more for fair and competent information.
The WochenZeitung, for example, which has never been reprimanded by the Press Council or the Fairness Commission, could benefit from such a trend towards "ethical media consumption". The possibility that its clean slate, as Kurt W. Zimmermann suggests in Weltwoche, is the result of editorial tameness or lameness can be confidently ruled out.
> Oliver Classen, Editor
The two self-regulatory bodies of the Swiss media industry are groaning under "an almost unmanageable workload": both the Fairness Commission and the Press Council recently stated that advertising and newspaper consumers have a veritable appetite for complaints - this is the price of the public attention that the two bodies have sought. This prompts Weltwoche to ask anxiously about the "degeneration" of our (thesis) journalism. And the NZZ suspects that the increasingly intrusive battle for attention in advertisements and articles is making media consumers more irritable.
Both interpretations sound plausible, but fall short and also lead down a false, culturally pessimistic path. Reflexive variations of the industry mantra "decline in quality" immerse the new willingness to protest in a gloomy fog rather than in the clarifying light of the present. One of its key developments and achievements is the seizure of power by customers and buyers - catalyzed by the Internet with its transparency and interactivity.
This new self-confidence clearly does not stop at the consumption of print products and the advertising that finances them. And that is a good thing. Because critical, committed and defensive readers, who no longer put up with every provocation and speculation, are an effective and valuable corrective for our rapidly and sometimes hollowly spinning media system. Those who grumble think for themselves - and in the medium term may be prepared to pay a little more for fair and competent information.
The WochenZeitung, for example, which has never been reprimanded by the Press Council or the Fairness Commission, could benefit from such a trend towards "ethical media consumption". The possibility that its clean slate, as Kurt W. Zimmermann suggests in Weltwoche, is the result of editorial tameness or lameness can be confidently ruled out.
> Oliver Classen, Editor
