Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 06/2009

Switzerland is reduced to tennis: Switzerland's image in the foreign media

June 2007

Media Tenor International

Abstract

The neutral image, passed on for decades in schoolbooks, rhetorical speeches and media coverage, had cracked in view of an international wave of litigation that was caused by American lawyer Ed Fagan, representing Jewish victims of the Holocaust. He tried to publicly demonstrate that Swiss banks, in particular, but also other companies, as well as the Federal Council of Bern had profi ted from the victims’ suffering.