News agencies
Main features:
- Monopoly on information supply: one national agency Schweizerische Depeschenagentur (SDA/ATS)
- SDA providing information for all linguistic regions
Until January 2010 two main news agencies, SDA and Associated Press (AP) affiliate, provided information for the mass media. After the takeover of AP by SDA, the national agency SDA has now the monopoly on information supply. SDA, situated in Berne, is the only Swiss national agency that generates information in German, French and Italian. SDA is a publicly listed corporation owned by the Swiss publishers. It is a non-for-profit organisation and a classic news service, providing information about politics, economics, culture, social issues, sports and miscellaneous from domestic and abroad. The Swiss Press Agency SDA receives no subsidies from the government. The Federal Chancellery, however, uses the services of the SDA for the entire Federal Administration, paying over 1m Swiss Francs per language. Contrary to many other countries of similar size, the SDA gets no funds for distributing Swiss content abroad.