"Media Forti" launches a call for a new media policy

The Swiss media landscape is in a state of upheaval. The media funding crisis is weakening independent journalism. But Swiss democracy needs strong media. It is high time that the backward-looking media policy debate is replaced by constructive solutions, says Media Forti. What is at stake is nothing less than rethinking media Switzerland.

Media Forti, the coalition for journalism of the future, is therefore launching a public appeal for a new media policy and presented it in Zurich on Monday. Nine well-known names from the journalism scene and media science, as well as a list of more than 70 prominent initial signatories, are calling for Switzerland to do so:

• a new infrastructure for modern journalism on which private providers compete with each other and
• a strong SRG, which fulfills a public service mandate and which should be "allowed a carefully controlled reduction of commercial revenues" through sufficient public funding.

Media Forti proposes a new approach to financing journalism. With the advance of digitization, he says, this is becoming increasingly difficult in the free market. Users and advertising have migrated to the Internet - not to the online offerings of media companies, but to search engines, social networks and classified ad portals that do not produce any journalistic content themselves. While the traditional media are already supported and promoted by the state, journalism on the Internet is left empty-handed.

Open source infrastructure and online media promotion

Media Forti Suggests on the one hand, an open-source infrastructure for private journalism providers. This is intended to prevent every media company from having to invest money in the infrastructure itself instead of giving it to journalism. All providers - from established newspapers to bloggers - would be given access, provided they agree to declare the duties and rights of journalists. This infrastructure would be operated by a non-profit organization. Costs per year: around five to six million Swiss francs - financed by foundations and the public purse.

On the other hand, production support is to be made available to providers on this platform. This functions independently of the state and is implemented without any interference with editorial freedom, writes Media Forti. Denmark, Sweden and Norway are cited as models - countries where this model has worked for decades.

The Media Forti association is independent of parties and interest groups. In order to maintain its independence, it deliberately refrained from asking active politicians and representatives of media companies to be the first signatories. Media Forti is backed by Manuel Puppis (president of the association), Anne-Laure Daboczi, Frédéric Gonseth, Olaf Kunz, Matthias Künzler, Robert Ruoff, Alexandra Stark, Chantal Tauxe and Hansi Voigt, representatives from journalism, media education, culture and science.

The call from Media Forti can be downloaded immediately on Mediaforti.ch be signed.

Syndicom and Imprint welcome the call

In a statement, Impressum emphasizes that it understands Media Forti as a "wake-up call": The details of the call may give rise to discussions, for example the idea that the "strong SRG" should manage without income from advertising. The journalists' association writes that, although Imprint is basically in favor of maintaining the public service to the current extent, it has not come out in favor of the question of whether and to what extent a reduction in the SRG's commercial revenues would be welcome.

Syndicom calls on its own members to sign the appeal. Democracy needs independent media and quality journalism. The dependence on advertisers endangers the freedom of the media. Equally fatal is the fact that Google, Facebook & Co. siphon off advertising money in the information environment without investing it in journalism. Furthermore, they condemn the profit maximization of Tamedia, where declining revenues in the print media are saved in the personnel, while 50 million francs per year "flow into the pockets of the owners and the carpet layer".

Syndicom is calling for pressure from civil society: public funding for journalism is necessary, and the distribution of funding must be linked to an information mandate and a collective agreement. Platform projects such as "Fijou" and "WePublish" should be supported so that independent media can invest their resources in journalistic work. (hae/pd)