Why the chaotic media club is good for journalism

Should private media receive funding? This question also concerns the fee broadcaster SRF. He invited supporters and opponents of the media law to the “Club”. The discussion program became a «fight club».

The guests were all media professionals or industry representatives who work with media. To know what comes out when journalists talk to journalists about media, you can also go to Twitter. On the news service, journalists keep to themselves. But what happens when an echo chamber is broadcast on linear television?

Hansi Voigt and Markus Somm only stayed a few minutes with you. Both journalists, both entrepreneurs, both opinionated and never of the same opinion. With his Basel “Bajour” project, Voigt is hoping for state funds, while Somm and his “Nebelspalter” are hoping for break-even for his private investors. And both discussed in Twitter mode: succinctly, polemically, personally.

Somm to Voigt: «Hansi! Why are you so desperate?!” Voigt later to Somm: “Unlike you, I made money online.” This went back and forth for more than an hour. Accompanied by Philipp Gut – journalist, PR man and head of the referendum committee – who enthusiastically fueled the debate, and media professor Manuel Puppis, who failed to objectify it to his liking.

When she wasn’t being interrupted, Susanne Lebrument campaigned for her family business (Somedia) and the local press. Anja Sciarra from the Basel online portal “Prime News” represented the younger start-up generation – and with refreshing composure. The discussion would probably have been calmer and more objective if the moderator Barbara Lüthi had only invited the two women. But would she have gotten any better?

Possibly. The responses – also on Twitter – were correspondingly negative. The whole thing is too loud, too shrill, too chaotic. Too many alpha males, not enough depth. They don’t even let themselves be talked out of, according to the accusation in the debriefings on social networks.

Professor Puppis involuntarily summed up this sensitivity. According to the scientist, media policy is much too ideological. It is completely logical and desirable that the different worldviews duel when it comes to state-subsidized media funding. Or not? After Trump, Brexit and two years of pandemic, it has become commonplace to suspect hatred, hate speech and the next division behind every raised voice.

One can draw positive conclusions from the media «club». The industry is finally ready to think more about the future of journalism again. So far, people have mostly been content with pessimism. The banks, the schools, the authorities, yes the whole world has to deal with digitization and the corresponding structural change. But nobody has complained about it as often and loudly as the journalists themselves for 15 years.

The debate in the “club” remained on the surface. But she touched on various business models and ideas on how to proceed with the much-vaunted fourth power. And she showed that journalism is still a matter of the heart, a vocation rather than a profession. The more violently and emotionally the arguments about journalism in Switzerland are, the better off he is.