By John Revill<\/p>\n
ZURICH, March 8 (Reuters) – Swiss voters on Sunday rejected a referendum to slash public broadcaster SRG\u2019s \u200cfunding, with the interim results showing 62% opposing a \u200cplan to cut the annual licence fee, a move critics warned would weaken \u200bmedia and fuel disinformation.<\/p>\n
The campaign wanted to reduce the annual licence fee that all Swiss households must pay from 335 Swiss francs ($432) to 200 francs.<\/p>\n
Supporters, mainly from right-wing groups including the \u200cSwiss People’s Party (SVP), had \u2060argued that the charge \u2013 the highest in the world \u2013 was too expensive, and that SRG, which runs \u206017 radio stations and seven TV channels in four languages, had become too bloated.<\/p>\n
They also said the SRG was not politically \u200bindependent, and \u200bhad a left-wing bias in \u200bits coverage.<\/p>\n
LOWER FUNDING WOULD \u200cIMPACT 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, opponents said, while an \u200cSRG weakened by lower funding could mean \u200bthat disinformation would be easier to \u200bspread.<\/p>\n
“A major dismantling of \u200bSwitzerland’s media infrastructure has been prevented,” said Laura \u200cZimmermann, leader of the campaign \u200bagainst the cuts. “Our \u200baccess to reliable information remains protected.”<\/p>\n
“We remain fully committed to accompanying the public in their everyday lives with a \u200bdiverse and high-quality \u200cprogramme,” said Susanne Wille, SRG director general.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.7757 Swiss \u200bfrancs)<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.7757 Swiss francs)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by \u200bBernadette Baum and Ros Russell)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By John Revill ZURICH, March 8 (Reuters) – Swiss voters on Sunday rejected a referendum to slash public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[4970,12401,41,276,3153,3537,17],"class_list":["post-27858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","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\/116196673023627916","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27858","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=27858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}