Switzerland
Switzerland is ranked 12 in the World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) 2023. Every year Reporters Without Borders (RSF) presents the list to compare and inform people about the level of media freedom in 180 countries around the world. Switzerland was going through a gradual decrease in the past few years after being number five in 2018. However, this year the cycle broke by raising two places from last year’s 14 place.
RSF is an international non-governmental organization with the mission to provide people with free and reliable information. It created WPFI to evaluate the states on five distinct categories — political context, legal framework, economic context, safety, and sociocultural context.
Generally, Switzerland provides a very safe environment for its journalists, according to RSF. However, the freedom of media has been weakened in the past few years. RSF presents that media subsidies have been rejected. Also, according to the European Federation of Journalists (ENF) and Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SWI), law has tried censoring aspects of the investigative journalism.
According to the news platform Associated Press (AP) , Swiss voters in 2022 rejected in a referendum government’s plan to inject more than 150 million francs into broadcast and print media every year. Foes of the plan said this would waste taxpayer money and hurt journalistic independence making the media more interconnected with the state. They claimed it could potentially cause journalists to be less likely to criticize public officials.
“A media subsidized by the state is a media under control. As the adage goes: ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,’” wrote the opponents of the proposal, according to an AP article, published in 2022. They stated media groups together took in more than 300 million in profits in 2020, even during the COVID-19 crisis.
However, the affirmative side portrays the condition of the media as struggling. RSF writes that big corporations have absorbed smaller media outlets due to the digital transformation. Also, according to the AP, 70 newspapers have disappeared since 2003 as advertising revenue in print publication has dropped 42% during 2016–2020 in Switzerland.
“Media groups are fighting to survive. Ad revenues for print press haven’t stopped declining or are getting swallowed up by giants like Facebook and Google, and subscriptions aren’t enough,” argued the Swiss Green party, which supported the measure, according to the AP.
Money has also been important when media outlets have to fight in court. According to the ENF in 2021, the Federal Court has disavowed the Swiss newspaper Le Courrier for a violation of privacy. That occurred because of the article published in the context of the Geneva referendum vote on the extension of the Museum of Art and History in which billionaire Jean Claude Gandur wanted to invest in. The financial impact of more than 40,000 fancs in legal costs on Le Courrier is an illustration of the very dangerous context of attacks on the media and press freedom.
Since 2015, Switzerland law has banned media to accept leaked bank data, according to an SWI article, published in 2023. Last year, because of fear of prosecution, a Swiss newspaper turned down leaked data, which suggested banking links to criminals and corrupt foreign officials. However, in February of 2023, the government supported a proposal allowing an exception in the law if the reporting is deemed in ‘good faith’.
In 2022, the federal parliament approved a tightening of “provisional measures” that allow a judge to block the publication of journalistic content according to the RSF.
“This will have consequences… and the only precaution for media to take may be to decide not to publish articles that may be too embarrassing” said François Pilet, co-founder of digital outlet Gotham City, in SWI.
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Vili-An Doneva is a second-year student in the American University of Bulgaria, double-majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication and Computer Science. While writing this article, she was very surprised to see that strongly developed countries also have some significant media issues.
