UBI: 20 complaints in 2014
The Independent Complaints Authority for Radio and Television (UBI) received 20 new complaints last year. As in the previous year, these were directed exclusively against SRG broadcasts.
Swiss television SRF was affected in nine cases, as the UBI announced on Tuesday. Four complaints were directed against SRF radio broadcasts. Radio and television in French-speaking Switzerland (RTS) was the subject of five complaints and television in Ticino was the subject of one complaint. One complaint concerned both SRF and RTS television. As in the previous year, the UBI also upheld two complaints last year. One concerned a report by Radio SRF on the relocation of the Weatherford oil company. The SVP lodged a complaint against the report, which linked the move to the immigration initiative it had launched. The second case concerned a Radio RTS broadcast on the Syrian conflict. In both cases, the UBI found a violation of the prohibition of objectivity.
While the UBI's workload remained constant last year, the situation was different for the upstream ombudsman offices: A total of 564 complaints were received there. This is more than twice as many as in the previous year (237). The significant increase is due to two cases: On the one hand, to a Post Rundschau" on the Gripen fighter jet, and the talk show duel between Roger Schawinski and satirist Andreas Thiel. This means that only 3.5 percent of all cases were referred to the complaints body. In its annual report, the UBI states that this figure underscores the positive function of the ombudsman's offices. (SDA)
