The supposed angel of peace came from above: Last Thursday, shortly after twelve, the Federal Council helicopter landed at the publishers' conference in Flims. But instead of peace, joy and pancakes, Media Minister Doris Leuthard was expecting a desert storm. A few minutes earlier, association president Hanspeter Lebrument had declared war on the SRG in the posh Waldhaus Hotel .
According to the southeastern Swiss publisher, their commercial Internet strategy threatened democracy and the figures presented by the SRG were falsified. General Director Roger de Weck, sitting spain rcs data as a private guest in the front row of the lecture hall, could only marvel. With Lebrument's brilliant scolding, the ties between publishers and the SRG have been definitively torn apart. The question of whether the SRG should expand and commercialize its Internet offering has become the ultimate question of faith.
Doris Leuthard's magisterial call for a compromise may have sounded charming, but in the end it was too pedantic and is probably unrealistic at the moment - even if the Federal Council, as political oracles predict, will ultimately agree with the publishers. "Power games" should be avoided, says Leuthard. The only problem is that we are already in the middle of it. Higher dialectics: The SRG's internet strategy has saved the publishers' association. Whereas tensions between big and small and fear of an over-exuberant Tamedia used to dominate, the entire publishers' guild now has a common enemy: the SRG - thanks to Roger de Weck. The rhetorically skilled SRG boss was not granted a reply at the media congress. Nor was it necessary, as the next speaker personified the new communication style far better: army chief André Blattmann.