Media Boss Unloads, Media Watchers Giggle, Hubris Strikes Again

Michael Hedges April 17, 2023 Follow on Twitter

Chief executives serving large concerns are largely gaff-free. Adept communications departments insure all talking points from the top are throughly cleansed. This is particularly true of media organizations that live by public image. Investors, it must be said, have no tolerance for off the rails comments: the CEO’s job - only job - is keeping the cash flowing. Hubris, as we know, can lead to explosions.

Reporters Cathrin Gilbert and Holger Stark from German weekly newspaper Die Zeit published last week (April 13) a mind-boggling exposé on the private thoughts of Axel Springer SE chief executive Mathias Döpfner. Extracted from internal emails and other electronic communication their report revealed the stark difference between private and public pronouncements. Herr Döpfner waxed frenetic over several years on many subjects; sometimes in German. sometimes in English.

Axel Springer SE publishes top selling tabloid Bild, magazine Die Welt and online platforms Politico and Business Insider. All feature copious gossip and are bent to the right. The company was founded by Axel Springer in 1946 and expanded across Europe and the rest of the world through a variety of joint ventures. It became a publicly traded company in 1985. Private equity giant KKR acquired a majority stake in 2020 and shares ceased public trading.

A lifetime Axel Springer employee, Herr Döpfner was named chief executive in 2002. In a salute to his enduring loyalty, Friede Springer, widow of the founder, gifted Herr Döpfner shares valued at about 1€ billion in 2020. In addition, she assigned to Herr Döpfner voting rights to her shareholding. KKR remains the largest shareholder in Axel Springer SE, 48.5%.

In Germany considerable attention was given to Herr Döpfner’s texts about - and to - Julian Reichelt, Bild chief editor deposed 18 months after damning accusations of abuse of power and a blockbuster investigation by the New York Times. Herr Reichelt was finally shed just before the “over” US$1 billion acquisition of US-based Politico and Business Insider. "Professionally, you deceived me and harmed me like no one else,” he wrote to Herr Reichelt, suspected of leaking to Die Zeit. “Personally, and as far as our common worldview is concerned, I still feel very connected to you. I think you know that, but I wanted to tell you again.” Herr Döpfner and Herr Reichelt shared a blunt dislike for former Chancellor Angela Merkel. Bild assigned two reporters to investigate whether Chancellor Merkel was an East German or Russian spy, noted Berliner Zeitung (April 13), the “big thing,” wrote Herr Döpfner. They found nothing.

Herr Döpfner was negatively predisposed to East Germans. “My mother always said it. The ossis (East Germans) are never going to be democrats,” he wrote in October 2019, pondering a longer missive suggesting rescinding reunification. “Maybe we should turn the former DDR into an agricultural and production zone with a uniform wage payments.” They “are either communists or fascists. They don’t do in-between. Disgusting.”

For former US president Donald Trump, Herr Döpfner had nothing but praise. “Can we give him the Nobel Peace Prize?” he wrote in an internal email, in which he mentioned rescinding the Nobel awarded to Barrack Obama. "Do we all want to pray that Donald Trump will become president again?” said another disclosed internal email.

No subject, it seems, is distant from Herr Döpfner’s gaze. “I am all for climate change,” said yet another message, arguing that human productivity increases in warmer climates. “We shouldn’t fight climate change but adjust to it.”

Hours before revelations in Die Zeit burned holes across the German business and political realm, KKR European Private Equity partner Philipp Freise effused “there’s a great CEO at work there,” to business portal Kress (April 12). Shortly thereafter major German business publication WirtschaftsWoche (April 14) revised that message. “A manager who expresses himself in the way Döpfner did in the leaked emails is actually impossible to bear for much longer.”

The day after publication in Die Zeit, Axel Springer SE responded (April 14) with a statement from Herr Döpfner. True to form, he mounted the “out-of-context fragments” defence that “cannot be held up as my ‘true way of thinking’.” He offered that “climate change is real and threatening” but poking fun at supporters is his right. Regarding East Germans and Muslims he has “no prejudices,” but concerns about the rise of the far-right eastern German states and radical Islam. There was no mention of the Julian Reichelt troubles, likely due to newly filed lawsuits.

See also...

• Hot Topics - Media in Germany

• Hot Topics - Axel Springer