Press Council: Cuts are part of journalistic work

 Last year, the Aargauer Zeitung reported on the criminal complaint filed by a private individual against Aargau SVP National Councillor Lieni Füglistaller. It did not omit any important information, according to the Swiss Press Council. The committee therefore rejected a complaint against three reports in the regional edition of the Aargauer Zeitung (AZ) for Freiamt. The complaint came from the same person who had filed the criminal complaint in question. In it, violations of the regulations of the canton of Aargau regarding the erection of election posters were reprimanded. The public prosecutor's office has since discontinued the proceedings.
The complainant complained to the Press Council that the AZ had not reported on all the violations mentioned in the criminal complaint. For example, it was omitted that the SVP posters for the federal elections had also been put up outside the prohibited zone.
The Press Council takes a different view: an essential part of journalistic activity consists of processing the available information and putting it into a comprehensible form. This process is "inevitably associated with a restriction to the core of the facts and the omission of details". The selection of information is basically at the discretion of the journalist.