At Axel Springer, Politico’s New Owner, Allegations of Sex, Lies, Secret Payment
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
What GDR authoritarian state?
https://www.axelspringer.com/de/presseinformationen/nach-neu...
But of course, for watchers of the NYT and how America likes to conduct its uh international relations it’s a very familiar sight. Sneaky one might say.
Bild’s politics are now center-right [lol], but have grown sharp-edged under Mr. Reichelt, a former war correspondent. The tabloid initially welcomed Syrian refugees, then turned bitterly critical of immigration (though it is also hostile to the far-right AfD party). A Washington correspondent for Bild complained, in internal Slack messages that subsequently leaked, of a slant toward Donald Trump in the coverage of the 2020 U.S. presidential debates. The paper has also attacked the German government’s Covid restrictions and its main public health expert.
There you go. Payback. Being an atlanticist lapdog 90% of the time just isn’t good enough.
False. American regular news. Because that publisher has been buying several American media companies, with more in sight.
As Goethe wrote: So fühlt man Absicht, und man ist verstimmt.
But why is this factoid even thrown into the article? For the added raunchyness alone to spice up the article, or to imply Döpfner is a bit pervy himself and maybe even wants to protect the pervy Bild editor Reichelt, who had sex with coworkers?
While I personally loathe Alex Springer, especially Bild, and then especially Reichelt, this article is really so void of fact that I can only conclude it's a deliberate hitpiece. Lots of handwaving, lots of unproven allegations, hearsay and insinuations. Bild and Reichelt, true hitpiece-afficionados, would love it... if it wasn't about them :P
Julian Reichelt is one of most (if not the most) powerful chief editor in Germany. The story does not end with "he fucked an intern" but Axel Springer is using its power to make this story not public. Mr. Dirk Ippen (biggest shareholder of ippen medias) prevents huge publications from multiple medias of months of investigations to this case:
https://twitter.com/janboehm/status/1449860072037879812/phot... (German)
The most powerful media people in Germany as well as Europe are the ones running Bertelsmann, a left-leaning media conglomerate, which ironically is responsible for a majority of banned social media content and accounts in Germany, as its subsidiary Arvato provides "content-moderation services" to Facebook, Google and Twitter.
Nothing fishy about a media conglomerate censoring opinions that are dissenting from the ones its own think-tank (Bertelsmann foundation) is promoting.
But yeah, Julian reichelt, is powerful.
But as the sibling comment notes, in other areas they're not at all left-leaning, e.g.:
Arvato, a division of the Bertelsmann Group, declared the privatization of public services a strategic business area.
It should not surprise anyone that characterizing their politics on a one-dimensional left-right spectrum is inaccurate (findings such as https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.12320 notwithstanding).
Before Occupy Wall Street went down in flames, (actual, hard) leftist liked to critique the false dichotomy between what’s presented as left-wing and right-wing politics in western democracies, and they were very right to do so. What I wrote here about media applies to politics just as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28904146
Sorry, what? Bertelsmann is a lot of things, but left-leaning ain't it. They are true neo-con/neo-liberal free-market fetishists. They are only left-leaning in so far as they are extreme-right-rejecting, with their Bertelsmann Foundation acting as their vehicle for lobbying, e.g. deregulation of the television market (where Bertelsmann is a big player with RTL). They are a lot like Alex Springer in that regard, as both are very "free market" and rather conservative (unless there is money to be made) and against too much "socialism" and against nazis.
They are also a direct Alex Springer competitor outside of television (where Springer thus far only has a minor presence after they repeatedly failed to take over RTLs competitor Sat1Prosieben) as Bertelsmann owns Gruner+Jahr (magazines, tabloids and newspapers), Penguin Random House (largest book publisher in the world) and additionally companies like BMG (music publisher), and the Arvato you mentioned (who not only do "content moderation" but credit checks, logistics and all kinds of other services).
Alex Springer and Bild, and Julian Reichelt at it's helm, is powerful, but a lot less so than a lot of people would want you to believe, and a lot less than they used to be. But I'd agree that Bertelsmann is more powerful/influential in Europe and Germany than Springer now.
This also happens to be the dominant ideology of American elites and the editorial policy of the NYT.
[0]: An eye-opening piece: https://palladiummag.com/2019/08/05/the-real-problem-at-yale... Cf. this thread: https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1443327471806521344
They do not care about tradition, and can read polls, that's e.g. why they suddenly were pro same-sex marriage when public opinion swung that way (e.g. before that Axel Springer/Bild was against it, now they are in favor). Bertelsmann isn't in "housing", so their foundation is pro affordable housing when they noticed the polls show that a topic that concerns a LOT of people.
They are not even real free-market, only when it suits them (which is a lot of times). When regulation and/or regulatory capture suits them instead, they are all for regulation all of a sudden, like laws to force Google to pay them money for linking to them instead of treating that as matter of contract law[2].
But don't you dare change anything about the status quo that negatively affects them, then they will show you how "conservative" they can be, in the sense of conservation of their power and wealth. Some regulation or deregulation to generate more wealth for them at the expense of their own employees or at least poor people? Some lawyer working for the Bertelsmann foundation probably wrote the draft bill.
That's why they regularly (as in: always) support the CDU/CSU, always bash the SPD (social-democrats) and Green party[1], and were initially a little bit torn about the AfD when it still was a party of free-market eurosceptics instead of the racist and xenophobic wannabe neo-fascists with a victim complex screaming Lügenpresse (basically "fake news/fake media") they are now. That goes for both Bertelsmann and Springer, by the way.
The only real ideological thing I can find with Axel Springer is their plea to support Israel and fight antisemitism, and a good "Trans-Atlantic relationship". You actually have to agree to do both if you want to work with them, it's in their company wide policy/code of conduct, ever since Alex Springer (the founder of the company) put it there.
So really, they are just opportunists, who lean right because leaning right is what conserves their power and influence.
[1] Except they are playing a little nice right now, because the SPD and Greens will likely be part of the next government, with the SPD leading the coalition.
[2] If Springer didn't want Google to "profit" from linking to their sites, they could have just blocked google. Instead they opted to lobby the government to redistribute Google's wealth... to them.
Yes and? That title reads like it's written by a 6yo.