NZZ am Sonntag escapes reprimand because the violation was not "obvious"
The NZZ am Sonntag published a letter to the editor with an anti-Semitic background. However, since this was not obvious, the newspaper acted correctly in the view of the Press Council.
In a letter to the editor printed by the NZZ am Sonntag in December 2016, a reader characterized a controversial German TV talk show host, a prominent Jew, as "over-excited" and "hormone-driven." He compared him to six other celebrities who - like the criticized man - had made headlines with sex scandals and other allegations. The six men to whom the letter to the editor attributed equally bad character are all also Jews. However, the author did not mention this explicitly, he only mentioned the names.
A reader complained about the article to the Swiss Press Council. He claimed that a list of six men with bad sexual affairs, consisting entirely of Jews, served old anti-Semitic clichés and violated the prohibition of discrimination in the journalists' code. The critic could just as well have listed six men of different religions.
The Press Council agrees with the complainant insofar as it ruled that this list does indeed correspond to a discriminatory portrayal. Listing only Jews in such a context reinforces corresponding prejudices. Nevertheless, it dismissed the complaint because the Journalists' Code of Conduct for Letters to the Editor expressly stipulates that interventions in letters in the interest of freedom of expression are only permissible in the case of "obvious" violations. However, this element of the "obvious" had been missing in the concrete text environment.
