The weekly newspaper The time published emails and chat messages from Springer boss Mathias Döpfner. This is doubly interesting: Firstly, because Döpfner is a very powerful person in the media world. And secondly: Because from these messages, according to the Time shows that he may have tried to address the political reporting of the Picture– To influence the newspaper. In favor of the FDP: “Can you do more for the FDP? They should get at least 16 percent. Lindner has to be braver. And a coalition with only the SPD would be much better than with the Greens,” Döpfner is quoted as saying.
For SZ editor Cornelius Pollmer, the leaked emails and messages from Döpfner are interesting because, above all, Picturewhich belongs to the Axel-Springer-Verlag, has an enormous reach in Germany: “At the end of last year, the circulation was just over one million and in the digital world, Bild.de is the news website with the widest reach in Germany.”
Basically, Pollmer says: “Journalists are not hand puppets. And they are not even when the hand belongs to Mathias Döpfner.” After all, the idea of journalism is not that the employees write down what the publisher wants.
We already know of text messages from Döpfner in which he describes Germany as a “GDR authoritarian state”. “Nevertheless, I was surprised by what was read at the time. In terms of sharpness, also in terms of bitterness, and also in a certain radicalism,” says Pollmer.
You can read the text by Cornelius Pollmer and Laura Hertreiter on the Döpfner emails here.
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Moderation, editing: Johannes Korsche
Editor: Vincent-Vitus Leitgeb
Production: Annika Bingger
Additional audio material about Axel Springer SE.
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