Newspaper takeover reveals rightwing strategy

The Basler Zeitung is a German-language regional newspaper, published in Basel Keystone

The takeover of the Basler Zeitung by rightwing Swiss People’s Party strongman Christoph Blocher could herald a new polarisation of the Swiss press.

The Basel paper is now officially in the hands of Blocher, through his daughter Rahel, after months of denials by the controversial politician that he had either a “direct or indirect” financial connection to the media company.

Other newspapers are crying foul and alleging oligarchy, most stridently the Tages-Anzeiger, which complained in its editorial that “with the Blochers, Switzerland now has an oligarchy family: complete with a castle, companies, factories and newspapers”.

The Zurich-based Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) also viewed the takeover critically, calling the deal a fiasco and the game of hide-and-seek over ownership embarrassing.

 

Three Swiss media unions issued a joint statement bemoaning the threat to the independence of the media and calling on the Blochers to sell their interest in the paper to a non-political buyer.

“When one of the richest Swiss – and vice-president of the strongest party – buys into the media, we are on the way to Berlusconisation,” the statement said, referring to former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is also the controlling shareholder of the media company Mediaset.

Media evolution

The purchase of a newspaper by a political figure marks a change in the evolution of the Swiss press in recent years, according to Heinz Bonfadelli, professor of journalism at Zurich University.

“In the past 25 years we have seen a move away from party newspapers based on a political ideology. Most have turned into what we call in German ‘forum newspapers’, independent of a political line, that define themselves as a platform or forum for the broad political spectrum,” Bonfadelli told swissinfo.ch.

Vinzenz Wyss, media professor at Winterthur’s Institute of Applied Media Studies, said the difficult financial climate for media companies was making them a soft target for political or religious actors.

“What worries people is that a political figure is grabbing a media company to build up his political power,” Wyss told swissinfo.ch.

Secretive

The secretive way the takeover was carried out creates a credibility problem for the newspaper, according to Wyss.

“The business of media companies, whose task it is to bring transparency to society, demands transparency from their side,” he said.

Bonfadelli pointed to the precedent of the Weltwoche weekly news magazine which changed ethos from liberal to rightwing conservative following a change in ownership and editorial staff.

“We have this conservative group in Switzerland, around Blocher, which has obviously been thinking for the past ten years or so that it wants to get back an ideologically based strong voice in the Swiss media market,” Bonfadelli said.

“They started with the Weltwoche… And now it looks like they want to try to incorporate a daily newspaper into their strategy.”

The Weltwoche’s former acting editor-in-chief, Markus Somm, who also happens to be 71-year-old Blocher’s official biographer, has been editor-in-chief at the Basler Zeitung for the past year.

High-profile players

The cloak-and-dagger takeover involved some of the highest-profile names in the Swiss business community.

Moritz Suter, founder of the airline Crossair, bought the Basler Zeitung’s parent company Basler Zeitung Media around a year ago and became president of the board of directors. Behind him, despite their denials, was billionaire businessman and former Justice Minister Christoph Blocher and his daughter.

Another front man for the deal was Marcel Ospel, chief executive of troubled bank UBS until three years ago. He fronted the SFr70 million ($74 million) loan from Blocher to Suter.

Ultimately, because of differences in opinion in how the company should be restructured, the Blochers exercised the option to claim Suter’s shares, which finally came to pass on Monday.

Blocher’s 35-year-old daughter was waiting in the wings in the form of the consulting company Robinvest she runs with her father. Not only was Robinvest acting in a consulting role to the ailing newspaper, it was also its chief creditor and therefore in a position to force the sale of the company.

Bombshell

On Monday evening, Suter dropped the bombshell, sending an email informing staff that he had sold his [100 per cent] shares in the company to Rahel Blocher due to major differences of opinion with the company’s creditors, the Blochers.

No one from the Basler Zeitung was available for comment on the “regime change” on Tuesday. The paper’s communications department referred swissinfo.ch to the one-paragraph statement – confirming Suter’s resignation and saying a successor would be announced by Thursday  –  published on its front page.

When contacted by swissinfo.ch, Christoph Blocher’s spokesman Livio Zanolari declined to comment on Blocher’s business activities.

If, as many commentators predict, the Swiss People’s Party does not manage to get a second minister elected to the cabinet on Wednesday, and if, as the party has threatened, it finally breaks with the traditional consensus model of government and enters into opposition, having a daily newspaper in its stable will be more important than ever.

Christoph Blocher

Christoph Blocher was born in October 1940 in Schaffhausen in northern Switzerland.

He made his fortune in the chemical industry with the EMS-Chemie company.

As a member of the rightwing Swiss People’s Party – the strongest at October’s parliamentary elections with 26.6% of the vote – he has campaigned against Swiss membership of the European Union and for tighter immigration controls.

He represented the canton of Zurich in the Swiss House of Representatives from 1980-2003.

With his election to the cabinet in 2003, Blocher won a second seat for his party at the expense of the centre-right Christian Democrats.

  

In 2007, Blocher became only the fourth cabinet minister in Swiss history to fail to win re-election. In 2011, he failed to win election to the Senate.

Rahel Blocher

Described as “The Ghost” in a recent – and rare –  profile in the Handelszeitung newspaper, 35-year-old Rahel is the youngest of Christoph Blocher’s four children.

After studying at St Gallen University, her first job was as an auditor at Clariant where she worked from 2004 to 2007.

She then changed to the electronics firm Elma Electronic in Zurich, where she worked in controlling until she was made head of finance and invoicing. Between 2008 and 2009 she was finance director but was unable to steer the company out of difficulties brought on by the financial crisis.

Rahel moved to her father’s newly founded (June 2008) consultancy firm Robinvest in November 2009.

The two Blochers are the only members of the company’s board.