Transparency about BaZ ownership demanded - Press Council approves complaint
The Press Council has upheld a number of complaints against Basler Zeitung Medien and is demanding that publisher Moritz Suter disclose whether he is the sole owner of the Basler Zeitung (BaZ) or whether other individuals are pulling the strings behind the scenes.
As a rule, information on the shareholding structure is sufficient to assess who controls a public limited company. This is what the Press Council writes in its decision published on Tuesday. However, the disclosure of the legal ownership structure is not sufficient if there are clear indications that the legal ownership may not correspond to the actual economic circumstances.
Based on the media research submitted by the complainants, it appears unclear to the Press Council whether the Basler Zeitung actually belongs to Moritz Suter from an economic point of view or whether it belongs to one or more unknown third parties, as the Press Council further argues. The Council is therefore calling on Basler Zeitung Medien to declare unequivocally whether and, if so, which third parties and/or institutions financed the purchase of Basler Zeitung Medien and what co-determination rights they have demanded in return. The demand for disclosure of direct and indirect shareholdings in
media companies is compatible with media and economic freedom, the Press Council continued. If the media set themselves the task of creating transparency about social actors and important social processes, they should not apply a different standard to themselves.
The first complaints were submitted to the Press Council in spring 2011. They complained that it was unclear whether the Basler Zeitung was actually owned by the Basel entrepreneur Moritz Suter, who allegedly took over 100 percent of the group of companies in November 2010. The complaints criticized the lack of information as a violation of the requirement enshrined in the journalists' code of conduct to disclose the ownership structure, to which both the editorial team and the public were entitled. At the time, Basler Zeitung Medien replied that it had long since complied with the disclosure requirement. The company had already announced with the takeover by Moritz Suter on November 24, 2010 that Moritz Suter was the sole shareholder of BaZ Holding. BaZ reiterated this position in a communiqué on Tuesday.
According to the BaZ press release, Suter holds all the shares in National Zeitung and Basler Nachrichten. Basler Zeitung Medien and Balser Zeitung as well as all other companies are combined under its umbrella. With this information, BaZ has disclosed its ownership structure in line with what other Swiss media companies also disclose. No other media company is required to disclose financing agreements. Such a demand would massively interfere with the freedom of the media and economic freedom in Switzerland.
