Facts
Swiss Television (SF) realized the Living History project "Alpenfestung - Leben im Réduit" in the summer of 2009 and set up a blog on its website for this purpose. A comment appeared on this blog, which gave rise to a criminal complaint for defamation. The public prosecutor's office demanded that SF disclose information about the commentator (IP address, date and time). SF filed a complaint with the Federal Court and invoked the editorial secrecy and source protection under Art. 28a of the Swiss Criminal Code.
The Federal Court upheld the complaint and revoked the public prosecutor's order to disclose. It concluded that the blog comment falls under the source protection of Art. 28a para. 1 of the Swiss Criminal Code and that SF does not have to reveal the identity of the author or any other information to identify him (IP address, time).
Considerations
The Federal Court stated that the source protection under Art. 28a of the Swiss Criminal Code is not absolute, but must be interpreted broadly in light of media freedom and editorial secrecy under Art. 17 para. 3 of the Swiss Federal Constitution and Art. 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The term "information" within the meaning of Art. 28a para. 1 of the Swiss Criminal Code is also to be interpreted broadly and includes contributions that are not of general interest or have an entertaining character.
In the present case, the blog and the associated comment…