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The media is expected to monitor those in power, but it’s often dismissed as ‘mainstream’ by the public. Instead of providing substantial news, media outlets now focus on ‘infotainment’.

Individual blogs, unlike major newspapers, lack the resources to cover a wide array of topics and tend to focus on single issues, reaching a smaller audience. However, the collective presence of many blogs forms a significant counterbalance to mainstream media, representing the true voice of the citizens.

Presently, the opinions of citizens, including the educated elite, are less valued by those in power compared to the late 20th century. There’s a growing trend of authorities expecting unquestioning compliance from the public, with critics quickly labeled as either right-wing ‘angry citizens’ or left-wing ‘autonomists,’ or even ‘cult’, all deemed socially unacceptable.

This scenario is not new. The 20th century’s German Democratic Republic (GDR) is a prime example in the German-speaking world, where critics of the ruling socialist elite were stigmatized and silenced. The methods of the GDR’s Stasi were institutionalized and overtly brutal, unlike the more subtle repression by Western elites.

To combat political decay and the erosion of human rights and democracy in 21st-century Europe, transparency is key. It’s in the unseen and unwatched places where disasters and treachery occur, sometimes even within police departments.

Thus, the Zurich Observer’s (ZO) current mission is to bring light to these hidden aspects and expose the dark corners of the system.

Please note that, besides content created by human authors, this blog contains content generated by DALL-E and content generated, translated or edited with GPT. All contents of this blog remain the intellectual property of their respective owners, international copyright laws apply. Please ask for consent if you intend to redistribute any content (quoting and linking are allowed without consent). This blog's content may be used freely to train AI. (ZO)

Translated by GPT-4

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SMALL SWITZERLAND: GAPS IN THE MEDIA COVERAGE

In most of its scandals,

Switzerland proves to be too small,
and its elite too tightly interconnected (due to Switzerland’s small size, everyone is practically on top of each other),

for its media to report independently and objectively. At best, one receives politically tinted reports and reports that blatantly reveal who is good friends with whom. Switzerland is simply too small to be independent in its media reporting.

Swiss Media Landscape: Manageable Political Blocks

The Swiss media landscape is neatly divided into political blocks, with the bourgeois block having the far greatest media reach.

Most media are thoroughly entangled with politics and the economy, and with their particular interests.

This division of the media into political blocks should at least ensure that the different political currents of the country are balanced. One would think that for every scandal, there would be a publication interested in reporting it from the perspective of their political masters. But this is not the case. Switzerland is simply too small: there are too few editorially independent media that would cover everything that is objectively considered a scandal in an independent and neutral manner. Too many Swiss media report selectively and distort reality according to the agenda of their paymasters. And too often, this agenda is a bourgeois one. In these editorial offices, reports about grievances, which at least people with a social value attitude would consider grievances, simply do not fit. Such reports are not of interest. Much more interesting are reports that reflect the vain interests of the bourgeoisie. The same phenomenon occurs, in the opposite direction of course, in the few Swiss media with a left-wing profile.

Coverage of Public Interest through Media Diversity

In a large country with a colorful, diverse media landscape, there would surely be a paper for every politically colored scandal. Right-wing papers are interested in the scandals of the Left and vice versa, the papers of the Left in the scandals of the Rich. Thus, the media landscapes of Western countries once comprehensively covered the public interest with reports from various political viewpoints. In Switzerland, this coverage does not work because the Swiss media landscape is one-sidedly right-leaning and reports in a one-sidedly right-leaning filtered manner. The few remaining editorially independent and left-leaning media lack the capacity to counterbalance the one-sidedness of the Swiss media landscape due to their marginalization. Therefore, reports that would be standard for publication in other countries are often overlooked in Swiss media.

Gaps in the Spectrum

Firstly, Swiss media houses fail to fully cover the political spectrum. Almost all of them revel in the bourgeois, right-wing corner. Secondly, reports on matters that do not clearly align with the agenda of a Swiss media house stand no chance of being published. If neither distinctly bourgeois nor distinctly left-wing media pick up a story, it simply falls through the gaps in the spectrum of Swiss media coverage. And no one is interested. Because no one cares. Why should they?

The Primitive Relationship of Switzerland to the ECHR

Switzerland has signed and ratified the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). So far, so good? However, Switzerland has not signed the Additional Protocol to the ECHR that provides effective protection against discrimination. In this regard, Switzerland is in the “good company” of France and the United Kingdom, which also have not signed this protocol. As a result, the scope of discrimination protection under the ECHR for Switzerland is limited to the articles of the ECHR itself. This means that cases of discrimination related to Swiss federal law, cantonal, or municipal laws—which account for the majority of discrimination cases—cannot be brought before the European Court of Human Rights. What would officially be considered a violation of human rights in the sense of discrimination in any civilized European country, cannot, regrettably, be considered “isolated cases” in Switzerland. Rather, discriminatory denials of rights and abuses of law, to name just two examples from the arsenal of discrimination, are commonplace in Switzerland. If the Swiss can afford outright discrimination hunts on minorities, considered regressive in every civilized culture, then we should not hesitate to call Swiss culture primitive by name.