Why Switzerland Has Not Banned Russian State Media Like Everybody Else

Euro­pean media is report­ing on why Switzer­land has not fol­lowed most of the rest of the West­ern world in ban­ning Russ­ian state-run news net­works, such as Rus­sia Today and Sput­nik. Accord­ing to a report in The Local:

In the days after Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine, author­i­ties in the Euro­pean Union, the Unit­ed States, Aus­tralia, the Unit­ed King­dom and else­where banned Russ­ian state-run news net­works, includ­ing Rus­sia Today and Sput­nik. In mak­ing the announce­ment, the EU said it would stay in place “until the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion and its asso­ci­at­ed out­lets cease to con­duct dis­in­for­ma­tion and infor­ma­tion manip­u­la­tion actions against the EU and its mem­ber states.” As of late March how­ev­er, Switzer­land has not fol­lowed suit – although sev­er­al net­works includ­ing Salt, Sun­rise and Swiss­com have vol­un­tar­i­ly removed the chan­nels from their net­works. Swiss fed­er­al coun­cil­lor Vio­la Amherd, the head of the Depart­ment of Defence, Civ­il Pro­tec­tion and Sport (DDPS), announced a plan to ban the chan­nels on March 23, call­ing them a Russ­ian “pro­pa­gan­da hub”. “After con­sis­tent adop­tion of EU sanc­tions by Switzer­land, stand­ing aside on this impor­tant issue would be incom­pre­hen­si­ble” a depart­ment spokesper­son told Swiss news organ­i­sa­tion Tame­dia. Legal experts how­ev­er ques­tion whether Switzer­land would be able to uphold such a ban. A Fed­er­al Office of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (Ofcom) spokesper­son told 20 Min­utes that the gov­ern­ment has ‘no legal basis’ to enforce such a ban.

Read the rest here (pay­wall)

In Feb­ru­ary, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed on the EU announce­ment that Rus­sia-backed media out­lets RT and Sput­nik would be banned in the EU.