The umbrella organization GeCoBi comments on the recently published article in Republik.
Statement on the Republik article “In the Name of the Fathers” of June 18, 2026.
Prepared: June 19, 2026
The article “In the Name of the Fathers”, published in the Republic, paints a picture of the umbrella organization for shared parenting and its president that we do not share in essential points.
In particular, positions and statements made by our president are placed in a context that, in our view, does not provide a balanced picture of his actual stance.
Regardless, we maintain:
Even on controversial topics, GeCoBi considers a respectful and fact-based dialogue more important than ideological attributions.
June 19, 2026.
The conversation underlying this report was recorded. President Oliver Hunziker has therefore requested access to the relevant recordings and transcripts from the editorial staff in order to carefully review the reproduction of his statements.
After reviewing the documents, we will comment on the article in more detail if necessary.
June 23, 2026.
Unfortunately,wereceived no response by this morning, which is why we contacted the editorial office directly again.
We did receive a reply, but it is not entirely satisfactory. Instead of the tape recording, we only received excerpts from the transcript, which were supposed to support the alleged quotes. In our opinion, however, these excerpts already clearly demonstrate the distortion of the statements in the article, and the entire tape would only reinforce this impression.
We will therefore continue to insist on the release of the entire tape, but at the same time, we are also conducting our own research to determine what further steps we might be able to take.
June 23, 2026.
Today, a first counterstatement was submitted, and its publication was requested.
In its response of July 1, the Republic rejected this request.
July 1, 2026:
As of today, a specialized law firm has been retained to represent our rights.
July 13, 2026:
Today, the law firm filed a formal counterstatement, requesting its publication and placement in the media database.
August 5, 2026:
Since we have not yet received any response from the Republic and the counterstatement has not been published, it is now being made available here.
August 26, 2026
The Republic announces that it will not publish a rebuttal and is not prepared to consider any other solutions for dispute resolution.
August 27, 2026.
We invite the editorial staff of Republik to an open discussion, leaving the choice of time and place to them. The aim is once again to find an amicable solution.
Republik, through its lawyer, states that it expects an agenda; it will then assess how open to dialogue I/we are.
September 1, 2026
We submit the requested agenda, also pointing out that due to ongoing deadlines, the planned meeting would have to be successfully concluded before September 15.
September 17, 2026.
After waiting until the very last possible moment for a response from the Republic, a complaint filed with the Press Council today.
The final deadline for filing is tomorrow, September 18, 2026.
For GeCoBi
Oliver Hunziker
President