Press Council: Watch out for court reports and cooperation between editorial offices
Anyone reporting on ongoing court proceedings or complex court rulings must work carefully. Anyone who takes articles from other newspapers must either make this clear or have the report credited as their own. This was decided by the Press Council in a ruling against the Sarganserländer newspaper.
In October 2010, the Sarganserländer reported on the health insurance companies' fight against insurance brokers who use questionable methods to persuade customers to switch insurers. The article also referred to a court ruling that had already been handed down in this case. It gave the impression that the Federal Court had classified a particular behavior of the brokers as unfair. However, this does not correspond to the facts.
What was special about this case was that the complaint was directed against the Sarganserländer and therefore against the secondary publisher of the erroneous article. This raises the question of whether the newspaper must take credit for the error. As the Sarganserländer did not explicitly point out that it had taken over the article from Südostschweiz, the Press Council decided that the editors had to take credit for the text as their own.
Complaint against K-Tipp
The self-regulatory body for media professionals also upheld a complaint against K-Tipp. The consumer magazine failed to refer to the provisional nature of a Federal Court ruling in a short report on the same proceedings.
