By John Revill<\/p>\n
ZURICH, March 8 (Reuters) – Swiss voters looked set on Sunday to reject a referendum to slash \u200cpublic broadcaster SRG\u2019s funding, with early projections showing \u200c62% opposing a plan to cut the annual licence fee, a move critics \u200bwarned would weaken media and fuel disinformation.<\/p>\n
The campaign wanted to reduce the annual licence fee that all Swiss households must pay from 335 Swiss francs ($431.87) to 200 francs.<\/p>\n
Supporters, mainly from right-wing \u200cgroups including the Swiss \u2060People’s Party (SVP), had argued that the charge \u2013 the highest in the world \u2013 was too expensive, and \u2060that SRG, which runs 17 radio stations and seven TV channels in four languages had become too bloated.<\/p>\n
They also said the \u200bSRG was \u200bnot politically independent, and had \u200ba left-wing bias in \u200cits coverage.<\/p>\n
LOWER FUNDING WOULD IMPACT SRG OUTPUT, OPPONENTS SAY<\/p>\n
Opponents had said the move reflected pressure on public media organisations from the political right, which has accused national broadcasters globally of being politically biased against them.<\/p>\n
News, sports and cultural coverage would suffer, \u200copponents said, while an SRG weakened \u200bby lower funding could mean that \u200bdisinformation would be easier \u200bto spread.<\/p>\n
“A major dismantling of Switzerland’s media \u200cinfrastructure has been prevented,” said Laura \u200bZimmermann, leader of \u200bthe campaign against the cuts. “Our access to reliable information remains protected.”<\/p>\n
“We remain fully committed to accompanying the public \u200bin their everyday \u200clives with a diverse and high-quality programme,” said Susanne \u200bWille, SRG director general.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.7757 Swiss francs)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by John \u200bRevill; Editing by Bernadette Baum)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By John Revill ZURICH, March 8 (Reuters) – Swiss voters looked set on Sunday to reject a referendum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[1750,4970,12401,41,276,3153,3537,17],"class_list":["post-27666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-funding","tag-public-broadcaster","tag-srg","tag-swiss","tag-swiss-francs","tag-swiss-people39s-party","tag-swiss-voters","tag-switzerland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116194360893518976","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}