National Council Committee: No obligation to use standardized language on radio and TV
Discussions on the political program «Arena» should not be required to be conducted in Standard German. The National Council’s Committee on Science, Education, and Culture (WBK) has rejected a proposal to require radio and television stations to generally use Standard German in news and discussion programs.
By 14 votes to 9, the WBK recommends to the Council that the parliamentary initiative by Antonio Hodgers (Greens/GE) on the use of language in the audiovisual media should not be approved. Hodgers demands that the standard language be used as a rule in all broadcasts to impart knowledge. Hodgers, a politician from Geneva, spent most of last year living in Bern in order to improve his German language skills. The fact that everyday life in German-speaking Switzerland is generally conducted in dialect presented him with communication problems. In order to make it easier for members of other language groups to access German-speaking Switzerland, Hodgers called for measures in the form of three initiatives.
The WBK rejects all of them. By 15 votes to 6 with 4 abstentions, it rejected the motion calling for a national language to be taught as the first foreign language. The demand that members of the Federal Council and the Federal Chancellor must always speak in an official language in front of a large audience in Switzerland had no chance at all.
