Sometimes it obviously takes distance to put your finger in the wound and achieve an effect. In any case, it was the New York Times that put the affair about the overbearing Bild boss Julian Reichelt back on the agenda after the Spiegel had done so in the spring, which, as is well known, had no consequences in the end. Now, via a detour from abroad, it was also learned that the German publisher Dirk Ippen had personally dropped an investigative research into the Reichelt case in his newspapers shortly before going to press. No, there were no claims on the part of the Springer Verlag in this regard, Ippen let know, no, he did not initiate that, explained Springer boss Mathias Döpfner.

The Reichelt affair nonetheless expanded into the Döpfner affair when excerpts from a private text message were published in which Döpfner said that the now dismissed Bild boss Reichelt was the only one who wanted to oppose a “new GDR authoritarian state”.

This has been driving the press landscape ever since.

Especially since Döpfner not only heads the Springer publishing house, but as president of the newspaper publishers association BDZV is the first representative of this guild and therefore speaks for all media houses represented in this association.

Private is private

In the meantime he has apologized for the derailment and identified it as ironic. Which, of course, raises the question of what he then actually wanted to say unironically? And: whether you can allow yourself such derailments in such a position. But let's stick with Döpfner's diction, according to which private is private. If he sends a text message to someone he trusts, he must be able to assume that it will be treated confidentially. That there is such a thing as a "safe space" for intimate things. Then, of course, the question arises as to why Döpfner's claim in his own right does not apply to the powerful instrument of his publishing house. By now at the latest, the business model of the Bild-Zeitung should be put on a new basis, the sentence: private is private.

Of all newspapers, Bild is by far the most frequently reprimanded by the German Press Council. There are impressive diagrams online showing that the paper has received a good ten times more complaints since 1986 than the second-placed BZ. This year alone there were twenty admonitions to Bild and its offshoots, sometimes because advertising and editorial departments were not separated, sometimes because of the lack of “truthfulness”, but most of the complaints concern violated personal rights.

Why is that not sanctioned?

If the sword of press law is too blunt for that, shouldn't the BDZV chairman demand the Döpfner doctrine?

Just last year, Bild had quoted from the private Whatsapp chat of an eleven-year-old boy who had just lost his entire family.

The paper ruthlessly exploited the suffering of a traumatized child.

And wasn't it the private message of a former Federal President on the answering machine of the former Bild boss Kai Diekmann that contributed to his fall?

Let's take Döpfner at his word: private is private.

His Bild newspaper should now provide the proof.