The Swiss Commission for Fair Trading published its 2006 activity report on Tuesday. The 40-page report provides an overview of the activities of the three chambers in German and French. The report is rounded off by various statistics on the sectors affected, the facts of the case and the media involved, as well as a section on unfair glorification of violence and public relations work. A total of 260 complaints were dealt with by the Commission for Fair Trading last year. The sectors most frequently affected were directories and lotteries and competitions. Complaints against occultism, which accounted for almost 10 percent of complaints in 2004, have virtually disappeared. Misrepresentation is still at the top of the table, followed by aggressive sales methods, which have increased significantly, and lotteries. Sexism complaints are in fourth place with 12.9 percent. Appeals have decreased significantly.

Thomas Huwiler takes over as head of the online platforms blick.ch, sonntagsblick.ch and heute-online.ch. The Lucerne native is responsible for the economic and strategic development of Ringier Verlag's online division.According to a Ringier media release on Monday March 19, Thomas Huwiler is the new head of the publisher's online newspapers. The 42-year-old's responsibilities include the creative development of new products and ideas and the coordination of online activities with print media with regard to journalistic positioning.
Huwiler studied business administration at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) in Lausanne and has worked in IT, marketing and consulting since 1985. In 2002, he became Head of the Bluewin Portal and a member of the Executive Board of Swisscom Fixnet's Bluewin business unit.

In December last year, 35-year-old Stephan Gassner took over as editor-in-chief of Tele M1 on an interim basis after the previous editor-in-chief, Heinz Lang, left the regional broadcaster in November 2006. The AZ Medien Group has announced that the Tele M1 Board of Directors has now confirmed Stephan Gassner as the new editor-in-chief. The new deputy editor-in-chief of the station, which belongs to the AZ Medien Group, will be Olivier Parvex.  
Stephan Gassner joined regional television station Tele M1 at the beginning of 1999 as a video journalist, editor and head of the service. From 1994 to 1997, he worked as managing director of the sports and leisure department at Coop Zurich. He finally decided to join regional television and has completed various training and further education courses in video journalism over the last eight years.
 
Olivier Parvex, the new deputy editor-in-chief, joined Tele M1 in January 2000 as a trainee. From January 2001, he worked as a video journalist, editor and chief of service. From November 2005 to February 2007, he moved to Tele Tell, Tele M1's partner station, to take on the role of deputy editor-in-chief.

Designers from 43 countries took part in this year's renowned international "Red Dot Design Award" competition. Among the winners is the Swiss CI agency Külling Identity. 2,548 products were submitted to this year's Red Dot Design Award in Essen. Of these, 43 were awarded the "Red Dot: Best of the Best" seal of quality for their outstanding and innovative design. Among the frontrunners are mainly European countries, as well as Brazil, the USA and South Korea. The "Red Dot" quality seal was also awarded 623 times.
The creative team from Külling in Zurich won an award for the packaging design of Helvepharm's generic products. The international jury judged the submitted products according to criteria such as degree of innovation, functionality, ergonomics and ecological compatibility. According to a press release from Külling, the "Red Dot" is not the first award that Helvepharm's packaging design has won: just last week, Helvepharm was honored with the gold award from the Marketing Trophy 07.
According to the competition organizers' press release, the Red Dot Design Award has a function of promoting designers, which has contributed to the increase in design quality in recent years. Furthermore, a Red Dot Award is an important indicator of whether a product has the potential to succeed internationally.
Around a thousand guests are expected to attend the award ceremony on June 25 at the Aalto Theater in Essen. The award-winning products will be on display in a special exhibition at the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen from June 26 to July 23, 2007.

The new editor-in-chief of the Thurgauer Zeitung is Ursula Fraefel. She will take up her new post as soon as possible, but no later than this summer. 
The 50-year-old Fraefel studied art history, political philosophy and archaeology at the University of Zurich and worked for a long time as a cultural journalist at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. She then worked, among other things, as a PR consultant at Farner PR and as a project manager at Switzerland Tourism. Since summer 1998, Fraefel has been deputy editor-in-chief of the St. Galler Tagblatt. From 2004 to 2005, she completed a part-time MBA at the University of St. Gallen.
 
Fraefel will be responsible for managing the editorial department and for the journalistic orientation of the Thurgauer Zeitung in the new newspaper association Nordostschweiz, according to the Tamedia media release. She takes over as editor-in-chief from Andreas Netzle, who was elected mayor of Kreuzlingen on June 1.

The French-speaking Swiss television station TSR is not giving up in the dispute over Swiss advertising windows on its French competitor M6. According to SDA, following an unfavorable court ruling, TSR now wants to prevent the advertising windows by appealing to the Federal Court. In TSR's view, M6 is engaging in unfair competition with these advertising blocks aimed at the Swiss market. In a communiqué issued on Monday, TSR explained its position that M6 is exploiting the exclusive broadcasting rights acquired by TSR for various films and series.  
Since fall 2001, M6 has been broadcasting with two signals in parts of French-speaking Switzerland. The second signal transmits the Swiss advertising windows. In this way, M6 increases its advertising revenue without paying for the broadcasting rights in Switzerland. The case was referred to the Fribourg judiciary in 2003. Last January, the cantonal court rejected an appeal by TSR. The Fribourg judges ruled that TSR should have turned to the sellers of the broadcasting rights. This ruling is now to be reviewed by the Federal Court.

"Linking people" is the name of the game, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung is currently proving how well it has mastered it. After bringing editorial staff and readers closer together, readers can now interact with each other in a virtual lounge called "Süd-Café", which has been connecting Süddeutsche Zeitung readers since Wednesday. In the online lounge, community members can create their profile, upload pictures of themselves and exchange ideas with others on various topics. Visitors to the lounge keep their own guest books and new forums can be created over time.
In addition, Süddeutsche has been promoting the exchange between editorial staff and readers for several weeks now. Readers can submit comments on articles that appear immediately after the article.
Süddeutsche is already building on its success with its readers' lounge: Its youth portal jetzt.de has 110,000 users after six years of existence and was awarded the Grimme Online Award last year for its development work.

The telecommunications group Cablecom is launching a new offer: with Cablecom Digital Phone you can now make free calls to the Swiss fixed network around the clock. The launch campaign was conceived and realized by the Zurich-based agency Werbeanstalt Schweiz. On the day of the launch, the agency was able to get an idea of how people felt as soon as they saw the news on the billboards. The corresponding emotions were subsequently captured in advertisements, e-boards, internet banners and a widely distributed direct mailing.

A new law is dividing the media world in Poland: Journalists are required to disclose any contacts they may have had with intelligence agencies during the socialist era.  
As freelance correspondent Paul Flückiger reports in the *Aargauer Zeitung*, the new vetting law requires Polish media professionals to fill out a so-called vetting form within one month. In it, they must state whether they collaborated with the communist secret services before the fall of communism. However, the text of the law has a shortcoming: it lacks a definition of exactly who is to be considered a journalist. Father Adam Boniecki, editor-in-chief of a Catholic weekly newspaper, laments: «Are occasional freelancers or readers who submit an article once in a while also journalists? I don’t know.»
 
Since then, the Polish media landscape has been in turmoil: On the one hand, boycott declarations are being published nonstop. For example, a group of well-known columnists led by former dissident Ewa Milewicz refuses to submit a vetting declaration, even under the threat of losing their jobs. On the other hand, last Tuesday, over a hundred Polish journalists and columnists expressed their support for the Kaczyński government’s new law: credibility and honesty are, after all, the foundation of their profession, they write in an open letter. For now, it remains unclear what will happen to those journalists who do not submit a declaration or who provide false information in it.
 
These events demonstrate once again how difficult it is to come to terms with a dark past. The question of what actually defines a journalist, on the other hand, should be easier to answer.

Pascale Bruderer, a member of the National Council of the Swiss Social Democratic Party (SP) from Aargau, has been elected as the new president of the Swiss Commission for Fairness. The young politician follows in the footsteps of Federal Councillor Doris Leuthard, who held the post since 2000.Until Doris Leuthard moved from National to Federal Councillor in the summer of 2006, she had chaired the Fairness Commission. The president of the Foundation for Fairness in Commercial Communication, Council of States member Carlo Schmid-Sutter, conducted a lengthy evaluation of Leuthard's successor. According to an SDA report on March 19, the 30-year-old from Aargau was unanimously elected by the foundation's board last Friday.
Since 1966, the Fairness Commission has acted as a self-regulatory body for the advertising industry. Its task is to investigate violations of fairness in advertising. Although the commission is traditionally chaired by a politician, it is financed by the advertising industry.

Established broadcasters are also increasingly bringing their content into the living room via the Internet. As Die Welt reports, a study by the Multimedia Research Group (MRG) was presented at the IPTV World Forum in London, showing the considerable growth in IPTV providers. In Europe alone, the number almost tripled from 49 to 133 between March 2005 and February 2007. In North America, there are now 309 providers.  
However, the copyright issue is problematic for conventional broadcasters. This is because they have not negotiated internet rights for most TV content at the time of acquisition. In order to broadcast these programs over the Internet, the rights would have to be renegotiated. Online video portals such as You Tube also pose a problem for TV broadcasters. According to a ZDF spokesperson, You Tube in particular contains many clips of "Wetten, dass...?" in which bets are edited or re-enacted. Ultimately, it must be examined on a case-by-case basis whether rights are being infringed. In view of the almost infinite number of clips, however, it seems extremely questionable whether copyright can be maintained in the same way as before.

ÖKK sees healthy and productive children as the future of Switzerland - who doesn't? - and is even doing something about it. From March 12 to April 8, the insurance group will be giving away healthy snack boxes to children of kindergarten and primary school age every day - before chocolate bunnies appear en masse, Swiss children will be given a taste of healthy snacks. For one month, ÖKK is providing a healthy snack in the playground. According to a press release, 280 children will be able to enjoy wholemeal crackers, carrots, cheese, grapes and pumpkin seeds every day.
According to the ÖKK, the consequences of an unsuitable snack are fatal. It backs up this statement by pointing out that, according to the Swiss Society for Nutrition, one in five children in this country is overweight. The insurer wants to combat this. Because, as project manager of the Znüni campaign Martin Albisser asserts, "If you do something for your health at a young age, you will generally maintain this behavior as an adult".
Last year, ÖKK launched an exercise campaign in kindergartens and is actively campaigning for more daycare places. Anyone who would like to send a lunch box to a child between the ages of five and nine as part of the Znüni campaign can register on the ÖKK website.