SRG is the employer of choice for Swiss journalists
SRG is the employer of choice for Swiss journalists. This was revealed by the "Journalist Study 2018" conducted by the market and opinion research institute Marketagent.com Switzerland, in which 332 media professionals from all over Switzerland took part.
The survey of journalists took place in February 2018. It reveals a thoroughly critical picture of the Swiss media scene. Only a minority of respondents (39%) described the current working conditions in journalism as "very or rather good". In contrast, 51% are of the opinion that current working conditions are "rather less good or not good at all". 10 percent describe the situation as unchanged.
There is broad agreement among the journalists surveyed that working conditions have deteriorated compared to the past: 79% share this view. Only 6 percent say that working conditions have improved compared to the past. According to a further 11 percent, working conditions have not changed, while 4 percent did not respond to this question.
The working conditions at SRG are rated best. For example, 19 percent of respondents stated that SRG would be their "ideal employer", followed by self-employment/own company with 4 percent and Google and NZZ with 3 percent each.
When asked about the type of media they would prefer to work for, as many as 32% of respondents answered: an SRG radio or TV station. This was followed by magazines (18%) and print newspapers (17%).
Cost not political pressure as a challenge
Media professionals see ongoing consolidation and cost pressure (62%), new financing models (52%) and digitization (38%) as the biggest challenges facing the media landscape today.
Attempts by politicians to influence media coverage, on the other hand, are only seen as a major challenge by 9% of respondents. And only 23% of respondents stated that they had already been put under pressure by politicians,
In contrast, pressure attempts from PR agencies and company spokespeople (33 percent), advertisers (30 percent) and readers, listeners, viewers or users (27 percent) are more frequent.
Not remorseful despite poorer image
The majority of journalists surveyed have no illusions about their image: only 4% say it is "somewhat or even much better than before". The vast majority of their peers take a diametrically different view: 71% say that the image of journalism is "somewhat or much worse than it used to be". A further 22 percent said that the image was unchanged, while 3 percent did not say.
The media professionals who took part in the study also paint a sober picture with regard to the personal characteristics of their profession: Only 59 percent rate their professional colleagues as "conscientious". 58% of colleagues are rated as "courageous/committed" and 34% as "dynamic".
The study participants are generally satisfied with themselves and their own work: a majority (54%) of the journalists surveyed said they had "never" regretted their own contribution, while 21% said they had done so "once". Only 18% responded that they had regretted their own contributions "several times". 7 percent did not provide any information.
According to the journalists surveyed, the biggest mistake in traditional media reporting is insufficiently intensive research (52 percent).
8 out of 10 would choose journalism again
Despite the more difficult working conditions and the deteriorated image, a clear majority of respondents (84 percent) would choose journalism as a career again: 40 percent say "definitely" and a further 44 percent say "rather".
However, 42% of the journalists surveyed could also imagine a job as a "press spokesperson for the public sector". When asked about an alternative job, one in three (35%) said: "Anything else outside the media sector".
About the study
The 2018 journalist study by Marketagent.com Switzerland was conducted from February 15 to March 2, 2018 using online interviews. A total of 332 journalists took part. 96% of them are full-time media professionals, with 72% having worked as a journalist for at least 20 years.
65% of respondents are male, 35% female. 74% live in German-speaking Switzerland, 21% in French-speaking Switzerland, 3% in Ticino and 2% in Romansh-speaking Switzerland or abroad.
45% of the journalists surveyed classify themselves as "left-wing", 33% consider themselves to be "center" and 16% describe themselves as "right-wing". 7 percent did not specify their political orientation.
