The Stuttgart Regional Court prohibits “certain configurations” of the SWR news app “Newszone”. The court announced this on Friday. It complies with requests for injunctions from 16 newspaper publishers who have sued the app.
The public broadcaster has been offering the app since March 2022, which is aimed at young users. At the end of March, the publishers were already demanding that the app be stopped from being distributed, as they believed that the app violated the State Media Treaty and was “press-like”.
The competent chamber at the Stuttgart Regional Court shares this assessment and now considers the app to be inadmissible in its judgment. The app accesses online content from the higher-level SWR program Dasding.de back, but that alone is not enough. There is “a fundamental thematic change” between “Newszone” and The thing before. According to the court, online offers under public law should not be characterized by standing texts and images, but should have their focus on a radio or television-like design or a corresponding combination, according to the principles developed by case law and literature. The court assessed a design of the app from April, but not possible innovations that followed.
“We regret this decision,” said Kai Gniffke, director of SWR. You will now examine them carefully and decide on further steps. Irrespective of the legal dispute, SWR “continues to strive to cooperate with the publishers and to jointly ensure a high-quality and diverse media landscape in the south-west.”
Behind the lawsuit is a fundamental conflict between public broadcasters and private newspaper publishers. For years they have been arguing about how much space public broadcasters can take up on the Internet – and where the fee-financed broadcasters become anti-competitive competition for private publishers.