Press Council: Complaint about takeover of editorial content rejected
The exchange of editorial content as part of media partnerships continues to grow, particularly in the online sector. The Press Council has therefore used an identical complaint filed against several media outlets as an opportunity to reaffirm its existing practice.
Editorial offices are responsible for all content that they publish, according to a statement from the Press Council. This also applies in particular to reports that they take over from other media. They should therefore check these articles before publication. However, it would be disproportionate to require the editorial offices taking over the content to investigate external articles themselves. The Press Council concludes that the duty to check is limited to obvious violations of the "Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Journalists". However, this only applies if the acquiring medium discloses to its audience who was originally responsible for the report.
In the specific case, the Tages-Anzeiger violated paragraph 7 of the "Declaration" by publishing the original article because it mentioned the name of a Swiss man described as "one of the world's biggest spammers", although it would have been sufficient to simply mention his company. This violation of the "Declaration" was not obviously recognizable for the editorial offices that took it over - without conducting their own research. The Press Council therefore concludes that the online editions of Basler Zeitung, Berner Zeitung and Thurgauer Zeitung cannot be criticized in terms of professional ethics.
