To the point: Perfect timing
After Ueli Maurer—our Federal President, a passionate reader of Grass’s works, and a self-proclaimed non-media consumer—briefly reverted to his role as a confrontational party leader at the Swiss Media Congress and made sweeping criticisms of the media’s quality and the topics it covers, he was booed by some of the attendees. Was this justified?
Criticism is good, but if you only condemn what doesn't correspond to your own view of the world, it gets a bit dull. From the booing, you can think what you want, but who gives out, must also be able to take. This was not the case! The otherwise not so squeamish Maurer complained that he had never been booed like that in 35 years. Lucky for him - but he doesn't know that, because he doesn't read the media - was also the fact that the majority of readers' comments on the various articles about the media scolding were positive. The fact is, many readers have something to criticize about today's media.
The annual quality discussion was launched. Then, on Tuesday of this week, the Media Club under the title "Ueli Maurer's media scolding". Roger de Weck, Director General of SRG, Norbert Neininger, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Schaffhauser Nachrichten, Kurt Imhof, Professor of Journalism and Sociology at the University of Zurich, Patrik Müller, Editor-in-Chief of Schweiz am Sonntag, and Iwan Rickenbacher, Chairman of Tamedia, took part in the discussion. I found the discussion interesting, with a few exceptions. Not even Karin Frei's lousy moderation, which, as in the first media club, didn't exactly shine (she missed the right pass, abruptly ended the discussion and moved on to the next one, lost the thread, didn't follow up, and wagged her finger in an annoying way), could prevent that. Remarkable the sentence of de Weck: "If the customers fall away, all other industries say, the product must become better. Except the media ..." Has something. On page 6 there is a selection of tweets about the broadcast.
Then, on Wednesday, the presentation of the fourth edition of the yearbook "Quality of the Media". At the same time as the press release from the publishers, there was also a press release from the Association of Swiss Media, which prophylactically demonized the yearbook in advance. And quite by chance there was an article in BaZ online with the title "If Kurt Imhof were a newspaper, it would be called Blick". That can't be it. One can be divided about the methodology and about Imhof's definition of the term quality. You can like it or dislike it, but we cannot avoid a discussion about the quality of our media. This discussion must be conducted without prejudice or blinkers.
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
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