A post about the former “Bild” editor-in-chief may be distributed again. This was decided by the Hamburg Higher Regional Court.
Lost against the “Spiegel”: the former “Bild” editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt.
In the legal dispute between the “Spiegel” and the former “Bild” editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg has now ruled in favor of the magazine. As a consequence of the decision announced on Monday, the article with the heading “Birds, promote, fire” can now be distributed again.
With the article published for the first time in March 2021, “Der Spiegel” made public allegations against Reichelt of misconduct towards women, abuse of power and the exploitation of dependency relationships. Reichelt then gave an affidavit that he had never received any inquiries from the magazine in this regard and that he had therefore had no opportunity to comment.
The Hamburg district court saw this as the lack of an essential prerequisite for permissible reporting of suspicions and therefore issued a prohibition order against the “Spiegel” in May 2021. As a result, “Der Spiegel” expanded the article to include publicly accessible statements by Reichelt and left it online. Reichelt saw this as a violation of the prohibition order. The regional court agreed with him and in November 2021 imposed a fine on the “Spiegel” and prohibited the distribution of the article. The appeal lodged against this decision has now been successful.
No violation of the prohibition order
The online reporting in question is no longer – not even in its core – the same reporting that gave rise to the prohibition order and constitutes its subject matter, according to the Higher Regional Court in its reasoning. The lower instance had assumed an infringement because, despite the text passages supplemented after Reichelt had commented, the reporting still concerned exactly the facts to which the prohibition order of May 2021 referred, namely the suspicion of misconduct towards women, abuse of power and the Exploitation of dependency relationships. This is a so-called core violation. The Higher Regional Court was unable to recognize this because Reichelt’s position would have been taken into account.
A spokesman for the Higher Regional Court informed the NZZ on Tuesday that the present decision only affected the fine imposed in November and the scope of the ban in May. The court gave an answer to the formal question as to whether the supplemented online reporting violated it. On the other hand, the resolution does not contain an assessment of the content of whether this “new” reporting in itself is legal in this form or not.
Reichelt was dismissed as editor-in-chief in October. Most recently, during an appearance on Austrian television on Sunday, he announced the establishment of his own media platform.