Press Council reprimands Aargau and Davos newspapers
The Press Council reprimands a local paper in Davos for discriminatory generalization. In Aargau, it accuses two free newspapers of "perverting" the democratic mission of the press.
Generalizing prejudices remain such, even if they are packaged in humor. The local Davos weekly Gipfel Zytig went too far in one case, according to the Press Council. A generalization of nationalities or ethnic groups is discriminatory if it is linked to a significant unworthy judgment, the Press Council announced on Tuesday regarding complaints against the Davos weekly.
According to the Press Council, Gipfel Zytig published two "humorous" articles last summer. First, readers were asked to answer questions about a picture of Asian students in a fictitious contest. A week later, the newspaper published a "proposal for a new Swiss national anthem." Several complaints claimed that the "competition" "vilified Asians in the worst possible way on the basis of their appearance," and that the proposal for a new national anthem had triggered a major media response with its "shocking xenophobia.
The Press Council judges the two articles differently, as it announced. The generalization that all Asians look the same is not linked in the offending article with a disparagement of this group. In contrast, in its "Proposal for a new Swiss national anthem" the Gipfel Zytig uses a tirade against various nationalities to generalize prejudices against foreigners.
Aargau free papers "pervert" democracy mandate
The Press Council accuses two Aargau free newspapers of having "perverted" the democratic mission of the press. Rundschau Nord and Rundschau Süd had offered politicians to publish their positions in the editorial section of the papers in exchange for money.
In the run-up to the Aargau elections to the state parliament in the fall of 2012, the Effingerhof publishing house in Brugg, which publishes the two newspapers, wrote to individual politicians offering to reprint their core theses. The conditions for publication were: ads already printed by the candidates, planned ads - or payment of 550 francs. But this contradicts the requirement of strict separation between editorial content and advertisements, as the Swiss Press Council announced on Tuesday. The procedure is highly questionable in terms of democratic policy. The journalistic self-regulatory body thus agrees with the complainant - the Aargau Juso president Florian Vock. He was one of the recipients of the offending offer.
The Press Council urges the publisher Effingerhof and the two editorial offices to change their practice in future elections. And specifies: "If the publication of a candidate portrait is linked to the placement of an advertisement, it is mandatory to label this portrait as "advertisement", "advertisement", etc." (SDA)
Teaser image: Gipfel Zytig (via Juso.ch)
