Swiss Radio-Television investigations spare journalist Darius Rochebin

Darius Rochebin should find in the coming days the antenna of LCI, which he had joined at the end of summer 2020 to conduct a daily interview. Since a long daily investigation Time – published on October 31 and reporting sexist and sexual violence within the Swiss Radio-Television (RTS) – partly incriminated the one who was for a long time the star presenter, the Swiss journalist had withdrawn.

Gold, “No act constituting sexual harassment, psychological harassment or attack on the personality of which Mr. Darius Rochebin would be the author has been established “, Demonstrated the investigation carried out by the law firm Troillet Meier Raetzo and mandated by the RTS, which made the announcement, Friday, April 16, in the morning.

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No harassment, and no“Element constituting a criminal offense” either, underlined the leaders of the Swiss public audiovisual group during a press videoconference intended to report on all the investigations entrusted to specialized firms after the revelations published in Time. Six months of investigations which promised to be explosive, for a conclusion announced in a Soviet setting by the persons in charge of the chain, and which almost entirely whitewash the latter. Six months of impatient waiting for Darius Rochebin and for his French employers, Fabien Namias and Thierry Thuillier, respectively deputy general manager of LCI and chief information officer of the TF1 group, for conclusions in line with those they hoped for.

A speech in front of the teams of the TF1 group’s news channel, where the portrait of Darius Rochebin has never been removed from the reception hall, and where he has not stopped going to work, is scheduled for Monday 19 April in the morning. As soon as this outcome was announced, the one that the French newspapers had nicknamed “The Swiss PPDA” (before Patrick Poivre d’Arvor was accused of several rapes) greeted “The seriousness of the investigation carried out in Switzerland”. “The findings confirm what he said from day one”, said his lawyer, Antoine Vey. Mr. Rochebin had filed a defamation complaint against Time, who maintains his version of the facts.

Flood of “freed words”

“There is no serious fault on the part of the executives of the RTS”, moreover welcomed its director, Pascal Crittin, whereas it is precisely the hierarchical chain which was questioned in the cases of harassment revealed by Time. In early November 2020, shaken by the scale of the reactions of its employees, the management of the audiovisual group had promised that any “Transparency would be made”. Neither the order of mission of the investigations, nor the details of the procedure, nor the statements collected will be known, for reasons of “Protection of personality”.

In total, 230 employees of the RTS group (out of 1,200) took the opportunity to voice their complaints and other complaints. On the scale of this flow of “Free speech”, the result may seem modest: one of the incriminated employees has left the company, another has received a formal sanction, and the head of the news department, on leave for six months, leaves of his own free will. No testimony collected allows to conclude to acts relating to sexual or psychological harassment, personality attack or any criminal offense, added the RTS.

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At the top of the hierarchy, those in charge are not worried. The board of directors of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SSR), the apex body of Swiss public broadcasting, expresses its full confidence in its managing director, Gilles Marchand (ex-director of RTS at the time of the events), as well as to Pascal Crittin, who apologizes to people who have suffered from certain acts committed within the group.

After a plethora of positions and comments, and now that the leadership has been confirmed in office, silence seems to have returned to the editorial ranks. Only the SSM union feared, Friday April 16, that the decisions taken by the board of directors of the SSR “Are not enough, on their own, to restore employee confidence in the company’s ability to deal with management problems without concession”.