Eviction of “Bild” editor-in-chief shakes up German media

It is in the form of a brief article that the German tabloid Bild informed his readers, Tuesday, October 19, that there was a change at the head of his editorial staff. “Following the investigations published in the press, [le groupe] Axel Springer relieved Julian Reichelt, 41, of his duties as editor-in-chief of Bild. (…) For Mathias Döpfner, boss of Axel Springer, “Julian Reichelt has tremendously developed Bild journalistically and, thanks to Bild Live [un canal d’information en continu diffusé en streaming depuis le 22 août], has made it a brand turned towards the future ””.

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To know the reasons for this exclusion, it is not Bild that you had to read, but its competitors, many of whom have devoted long articles to this affair which has shaken the German media landscape since an investigation published, Sunday, October 17, in the New York Times. According to the latter, Julian Reichelt notably promoted to a position of responsibility a journalist with whom he had an affair. “If they find out that I have a relationship with an intern, they will get rid of me”, he confided to this woman in 2016, according to remarks reported by the latter to a commission of inquiry, and cited by the American daily.

Very right-handed positions

If the article of New York Times rushed things – the dismissal of Julian Reichelt was announced twenty-four hours after its publication – it was only a half-surprise, however. Appointed as head of digital editorial staff Bild in 2014, then, three years later, editor-in-chief of the entire newspaper, this former war correspondent, known for his very right-wing positions and in constant struggle against the policy of Angela Merkel, considered too centrist, had previously been worried about his behavior towards women.

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In March, he was thus suspended for twelve days, after the Spiegel revealed, in an article entitled “Coucher, promote, virer”, that it was the subject of an investigation, entrusted to an external firm, by the Axel Springer group. At the time, however, he very quickly found his job, his employer having considered that the “Management errors identified as part of this investigation [n’étaient] not criminal in nature ”.

The dog’s image of the boss

For the Axel Springer group, which announced, on August 26, the acquisition of the American political information site Politico, presented as “The biggest acquisition in its history” (about 850 million euros), this case is very bad. All the more so as it ricochets the image of Mathias Döpfner: the Spiegel revealed on Monday, October 18, a text message he had sent to a friend in the spring after an article in Bild against anti-Covid restrictions. In this SMS, Mathias Döpfner greeted Julian Reichelt as “The last and only journalist in the country who courageously fights against the new authoritarian state of the GDR”, an allusion to the former communist regime in East Germany, to which opponents of health policy – especially on the far right – like to compare the current government.

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