UBI approves complaint against SRF online article
Published: Thursday, Dec 14th 2023, 19:01
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The Independent Complaints Authority for Radio and Television (UBI) has upheld a complaint against an online article by Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen SRF about a school experiment in the canton of Lucerne. The article violated the principle of fairness, according to a statement issued by the UBI on Thursday evening.
The online article "Austickende Schulkinder - Luzern schickt Radau-Kinder testweise in spezielle Klassen" published by SRF on May 22, 2023 was based on a media release from the canton of Lucerne on a school trial with special school classes at mainstream schools.
The UBI upheld the complaint by 8 votes to 1, stating that a false impression had been conveyed about the children with special educational needs discussed in the article. According to the UBI, the main question was whether the readers were able to form their own opinion in the sense of the principle of objectivity. This was not possible.
In this first version of the article, the behavior of children with special educational needs was described in sometimes drastic terms, as in the title. It also failed to mention that these were children with an identified impairment (e.g. ADHD/POS, autism). This fact was also explicitly stated in the media release from the Canton of Lucerne.
In contrast, the UBI unanimously rejected the complaint against an adapted version of the same article dated 24 May 2023. The reasons for the behavioral abnormalities were also reported in the adapted version.
The Commission assessed the lack of transparency regarding the publication date of these changes as a deficiency. However, the UBI also stated that this was an error in a secondary point that did not constitute a violation of the principle of fairness. As with the original version, the UBI did not consider the principle of non-discrimination to have been violated.
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