Kindergarten
Pierre C. Meier on differences of opinion and the president acting unilaterally.
Hanspeter Lebrument, President of the Swiss Press Association (VSP),
his colleagues in the association. In the past few years
contributed too little to unity and thus to strengthening the association
and only complained. This lack of discipline is one of the reasons for the
Unsuccessfulness of the industry to develop favorable
General conditions for the press. Other sectors are disciplined
and would fight together.
At the same conference, Lebrument called for the renunciation of
Postal subsidies and state support for the press. It seems
but that this was not agreed with the Executive Committee. Because only then
This can be explained by the fact that board member Guido Blumer, head of the
of the Department of Ethics and publisher of the Winterthur Stadtblatt, only
just one day later in an open letter Lebrument to the cart
and calls for a Lex Lebrument, which would require a co-presidency with a
SME representatives. The anti-press council tirade of the
President at last year's Publishers' Congress (the Press Council is "a
chatty and arbitrary institution") came up again.
Two weeks later, Lebrument published his
Thoughts on the topic of the Press Council, as usual, woodcut-like and juicy. The
Press Council is a "fraudulent label", "arbitrary and gossipy".
After 20 years of unsuccessful efforts to gain a seat on the Press Council, the VSP has now had enough.
The VSP has decided to set up its own self-regulation system.
The Department of Ethics has been tasked with this. Guido Blumer, Head
of the same ethics department, writes on the website persönlich.com that the presidium of the VSP is not in agreement with the opinion of his
President. They are convinced of the high quality and benefits
The VSP's planned self-regulatory body should only be established as a supplement to the Press Council.
This unspeakable banter in public is useless. It
only reduces the chance of being taken seriously as an industry. This can
is not the goal.
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
