Brief Review

The Media

In Switzerland, freedom of the press and the right to free expression are guaranteed in the federal constitution. The Swiss News Agency AG (SNA) is the national news agency of Switzerland. It broadcasts information 24 hours a day in three national languages, German, French and Italian, on politics, economics, society and culture. The SNA supplies almost all the Swiss media and a couple dozen foreign media services with its news.

Newspapers | There are no national Swiss newspapers, however, Switzerland has more than 200 newspapers nationwide. Almost without exception they are simple local papers, reporting cantonal and municipal affairs in some detail, but limiting Swiss and world news to a few inside columns. Interestingly, French-speaking Swiss regularly read Paris’s Le Monde or Libération for world news, and the Ticinesi read Milan’s Corriere della Sera, however, it is rare for the German-speaking Swiss to read German newspapers.

Zürich’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung, or NZZ (331.000 readers), is the best known of the Swiss newspapers. Conservative and intellectual, it has gained its reputation by reporting Swiss and world events with scrupulously high journalistic standards. The French language equivalent may be the much more dynamic Le Temps (142.000 readers), published in Geneva and formed from the 1998 merger of the Journal de Genève, one of Switzerland’s oldest newspapers, and the Nouveau Quotidien, one of its newest. Switzerland’s biggest-selling paper is Blick (717.000 readers), a right-wing publication that regularly espouses anti-immigration and anti-asylum causes.

Television and Radio | According to the European Journalism Centre, statistically, 80% of all households have access to cable TV and receive over 40 channels. Ten percent of all Swiss households have access to a satellite dish.

Switzerland has at least six terrestrial TV stations available everywhere, two channels each from Schweizer Fernsehen (SF), Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR) and Televisione Svizzera Italiana (TSI), plus a handful of national channels from mostly German-speaking private operators, and plenty of local stations for each area. Should you decide you would like more channels, you must subscribe to a cable or satellite company. Often a cable connection is already installed in houses or apartments and the fee is included in the monthly rent. Television programs via cable include broadcasts from Austria, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the United States. You can even arrange to get TV channels via the internet. Check with your local cable TV, satellite company or internet provider for details, or check the Comparis web site to compare companies and offers.

Each linguistic area of the country has three broad-coverage regional radio stations, one channel each of news, classical music and popular music, although stations from neighbouring countries are easy to pick up as well. Switzerland also has more than forty local radio stations catering to various communities around the country.