SRF 1 radio report violates the requirement of factual fairness

This was the decision of the Federal Supreme Court, which upheld an appeal by Kessler and the VgT. In the aforementioned ruling of June 26, 2014, the Federal Supreme Court had to decide whether the content of an article on the website of the Verein gegen Tierfabriken Schweiz (VgT) violates the personality of Daniel Vasella. In the text, animal experiments were described as mass crimes committed by "Vasella and consorts". The discussion among the five Lausanne judges centered on how the average reader understands the term "mass crimes against animals." A majority of the judges found that a reader would not think of genocide when reading it. He would be in a position to recognize that the VgT and its president Erwin Kessler would understand the term mass crime in a moral-ethical sense.

In a barely three-minute report in the news program "Regionaljournal Ostschweiz", the Federal Court correspondent was interviewed by Radio SRF about the consultation. He had attended these. In justification of the verdict, the journalist stated, among other things, that the majority of the judges had taken neither Erwin Kessler nor his statements seriously. According to the judgment of the Federal Supreme Court published on Monday, the emphasis and repetition of this statement gave the listener a false impression. The impression was created that the non-acceptance led to the negation of the violation of personality. The Lausanne judges wrote in their current ruling that there was a lack of information that the average reader would not relate "mass crimes" in connection with "experimental animals" to a mass crime against humans or genocide - which was the justification for the violation of personality. The ruling of the Independent Appeals Authority for Radio and Television of December 12, 2014, is thus overturned. (SDA)