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For The Record  

FTR #298 Update on German Corporate Control Over American Media

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NB: This RealAu­dio stream con­tains FTRs 297 and 298 in sequence. Each is a 30-minute broad­cast.

1. Begin­ning with a sto­ry about an award being giv­en to Ber­tels­mann CEO Thomas Mid­del­hoff, the pro­gram high­lights some inter­est­ing aspects of Ger­man cor­po­rate con­trol over the Amer­i­can media. “In a qui­et water­shed of Jew­ish phil­an­thropy, the hon­oree at a UJA-Fed­er­a­tion ben­e­fit din­ner next month will be Thomas Mid­del­hof, the chief exec­u­tive of Ber­tels­mann, a Ger­man media con­glom­er­ate that pub­lished Nazi pro­pa­gan­da for Hitler’s army. Those who choose Mr. Mid­del­hoff, to be hon­ored at the Steven J. Ross din­ner on May 15 stress that Mr. Mid­del­hoff was born after the war and has inves­ti­gat­ed Ber­tels­man­n’s past and made what repa­ra­tions he could . . . . The $1,000-a-plate Ross din­ner, at which Matthew Bronf­man’s broth­er Edgar Bronf­man Jr. was a pre­vi­ous hon­oree, attracts some of the most promi­nent cor­po­rate and media fig­ures in New York. This year, Tom Brokaw, the NBC News anchor, will be the mas­ter of cer­e­monies and Stephen M. Case, the chair­man of AOL Time Warn­er, will present the award . . . . Elie Wiesel, a writer and Holo­caust sur­vivor, will deliv­er the key-note speech. Last fall, ran­dom House, which is owned by Ber­tels­mann, pledged $1 mil­lion to the Holo­caust Sur­vivors’ Mem­oir Project, for which Mr. Wiesel is the hon­orary chair­man. Mr. Wiesel is the hon­orary chair­man. Mr. Wiesel said he agreed to speak because he trust­ed Mr. Mid­del­hoff. ‘While it was in the end Ran­dom House that gave the mon­ey for the sur­vivors’ mem­oirs, the agree­ment was with Ber­tels­mann, and it was Mid­del­hoff who made the com­mit­ment,’ Mr. Wiesel said . . . . Not long after Mr. Mid­del­hoff became chief exec­u­tive in 1998, crit­i­cal sto­ries about Ber­tels­man­n’s war his­to­ry appeared in The Nation mag­a­zine and a Swiss mag­a­zine. Mr. Mid­del­hoff then cre­at­ed an inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion, head­ed by the his­to­ri­an Saul Fried­lan­der, to look into the com­pa­ny’s past. In Jan­u­ary 2000, the com­mis­sion found that Ber­tels­mann had not opposed Hitler, as the com­pa­ny had pre­vi­ous­ly claimed. Rather, it said, the com­pa­ny had ties to the Nazis, and was the largest sup­pli­er of read­ing mate­r­i­al, includ­ing Nazi pro­pa­gan­da, to the Ger­man mil­i­tary. Three months lat­er, Ber­tels­mann announced that it would con­tribute to the Ger­man fund to com­pen­sate work­ers used as slave labor in the Nazi era.” (“Past Col­lides With Clo­sure as Jews Hon­or a Ger­man” by Tamar Lewin; New York Times; 4/30/2001; p. A18.)

2. The giv­ing of this award to Mid­del­hoff is iron­ic and grotesque in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent respects. (Much of the series on Ger­man cor­po­rate con­trol over Amer­i­can media is devot­ed to Ber­tels­mann and there is an abun­dant amount of infor­ma­tion on the firm in the oth­er pro­grams in this series.) The avail­able evi­dence strong­ly sug­gests that Ber­tels­mann is part of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. (The eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal com­po­nent of a Third Reich gone under­ground, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion con­trols cor­po­rate Ger­many and much of the rest of the world. It was cre­at­ed and run by Mar­tin Bor­mann, the orga­ni­za­tion­al genius who was the “the pow­er behind the throne” in Nazi Ger­many. The Bor­mann group is a pri­ma­ry ele­ment of the analy­sis pre­sent­ed in the For the Record pro­grams.)

3. Review­ing some of the salient aspects of the Ber­tels­mann firm, we high­light the grotesque qual­i­ty to the grant­i­ng of the award to Mid­del­hoff.  (“Ber­tels­man­n’s Nazi Past” by Her­sch Fis­chler and John Fried­man; The Nation; 12/28/98; p. 1.)

4. “Issu­ing more than 20 mil­lion vol­umes, Ber­tels­mann was the largest sup­pli­er to the army and sup­plied the SS. When Ber­tels­mann applied after the war for a sec­ond pub­lish­ing license, it was turned down by occu­pa­tion author­i­ties. [Ber­tels­mann patri­arch Hein­rich] Mohn had ‘for­got­ten’ to men­tion that he had been a ‘pas­sive’ mem­ber of the SS, as well as a sup­port­er of the Hitler Youth and a mem­ber of the pres­ti­gious Nation­al Social­ist Fly­ing Corps, accord­ing to de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion files in the cen­tral state archive in Dus­sel­dorf.” (“Ber­tels­man­n’s Nazi Past” by Her­sch Fis­chler and John Fried­man; The Nation; 12/28/98; pp. 1–2.)

5. As indi­cat­ed in the New York Times arti­cle cit­ed above, when the infor­ma­tion about the fir­m’s Nazi past was print­ed in The Nation, Mid­del­hoff formed an “inde­pen­dent” com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate it. One of the appointees to that com­mis­sion was Dirk Baven­damm (Ber­tels­man­n’s offi­cial his­to­ri­an), whose work and views call into ques­tion the degree of sep­a­ra­tion that the com­pa­ny has effect­ed from its Third Reich her­itage.

6. “His book Roo­sevelt’s Way to War (Roo­sevelt’s Weg zum Krieg) was pub­lished in 1983. Rewrit­ing his­to­ry, he stat­ed that Roo­sevelt, not Hitler had caused World War II. He also wrote that Amer­i­can Jews con­trolled most of the media,’ and he claimed they gave a false pic­ture of Hitler. Did the book impress [Hein­rich’s son Rein­hard] Mohn, then the major­i­ty share­hold­er of Ber­tels­mann? The firm hired Baven­damm as its house his­to­ri­an, and in 1984 he com­plet­ed a his­tor­i­cal study, 150 Years of Ber­tels­mann: The Founders and Their Time—with a fore­word by Mohn. A year lat­er, Baven­damm edit­ed the fir­m’s offi­cial his­to­ry, which set forth the untrue sto­ry that the firm had resist­ed the Nazis and had been closed down by them. Mohn also asked Baven­damm to write the autho­rized his­to­ry of the Mohn fam­i­ly, pub­lished in 1986 under the title Ber­tels­mann, Mohn, Scip­pel: Three Families—One Com­pa­ny. In a sec­ond book, Roo­sevelt’s War (pub­lished in 1993, reis­sued in 1998), Baven­damm accus­es the U.S. Pres­i­dent of enact­ing a plan to start World War II. In the same book he sug­gests that Hitler’s threats in ear­ly 1939 against Euro­pean Jew­ry were a reac­tion to Roo­sevelt’s strat­e­gy against Ger­many. After the rev­e­la­tions about Ber­tels­man­n’s Nazi past appeared, the com­pa­ny announced that it had asked ‘the his­to­ri­an and pub­li­cist Dr. Dirk Baven­damm to look at the new infor­ma­tion and begin to rein­ves­ti­gate the role the pub­lish­ing house played in those days’ and defend­ed his work.” (“Ber­tels­man­n’s Revi­sion­ist” by Her­sch Fis­chler and John Fried­man; The Nation; 11/8/99; p. 1.)

7. In that con­text, it is inter­est­ing to spec­u­late about Ber­tels­man­n’s motives in back­ing the sur­vivors’ mem­oir and con­tribut­ing to the fund to com­pen­sate vic­tims of the Third Reich. (Pub­lic rela­tions con­sid­er­a­tions are prob­a­bly para­mount in this regard.) It is also inter­est­ing to note that the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, to which Ber­tels­mann appears to belong, wields con­sid­er­able in Israel and with­in that coun­try’s sup­port net­work abroad. “Since the found­ing of Israel, the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many had paid out 85.3 bil­lion marks, by the end of 1977, to sur­vivors of the Holo­caust. East Ger­many ignores any such lia­bil­i­ty. From South Amer­i­ca, where pay­ment must be made with sub­tle­ty, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion has made a sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion. It has drawn many of the bright­est Jew­ish busi­ness­men into a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry role in the devel­op­ment of many of its cor­po­ra­tions, and many of these Jews share their pros­per­i­ty most gen­er­ous­ly with Israel. If their pro­pos­als are sound, they are even pro­vid­ed with a spe­cial­ly dis­pensed ven­ture cap­i­tal fund. I spoke with one Jew­ish busi­ness­man in Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut. He had arrived there quite unknown sev­er­al years before our con­ver­sa­tion, but with Bor­mann mon­ey as his lever­age. Today he is more than a mil­lion­aire, a qui­et leader in the com­mu­ni­ty with a cer­tain share of his prof­its ear­marked, as always, for his ven­ture cap­i­tal bene­fac­tors. This has tak­en place in many oth­er instances across Amer­i­ca and demon­strates how Bor­man­n’s peo­ple oper­ate in the con­tem­po­rary com­mer­cial world, in con­trast to the fan­ci­ful non­sense with which Nazis are described in so much ‘lit­er­a­ture.’ So much empha­sis is placed on select Jew­ish par­tic­i­pa­tion in Bor­mann com­pa­nies that when Adolf Eich­mann was seized and tak­en to Tel Aviv to stand tri­al, it pro­duced a shock wave in the Jew­ish and Ger­man com­mu­ni­ties of Buenos Aires. Jew­ish lead­ers informed the Israeli author­i­ties in no uncer­tain terms that this must nev­er hap­pen again because a rep­e­ti­tion would per­ma­nent­ly rup­ture rela­tions with the Ger­mans of Latin Amer­i­ca, as well as with the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, and cut off the flow of Jew­ish mon­ey to Israel. It nev­er hap­pened again, and the pur­suit of Bor­mann qui­et­ed down at the request of these Jew­ish lead­ers. He is resid­ing in an Argen­tine safe haven, pro­tect­ed by the most effi­cient Ger­man infra­struc­ture in his­to­ry, as well as by all those whose pros­per­i­ty depends on his well-being. Per­son­al invi­ta­tion is the only way to reach him.” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 226–227.)

8. It is iron­ic to note that Holo­caust sur­vivor Wiesel lauds Ran­dom House for its sup­port for the sur­vivors’ mem­oir. Ran­dom House­’s behav­ior vis-à-vis a book authored by a key wit­ness in Holo­caust revi­sion­ist David Irv­ing’s unsuc­cess­ful libel suit against Deb­o­rah Lip­stadt and her pub­lish­er sug­gests that Wiesel’s acco­lades are, at the very least, pre­ma­ture. “[Queens Coun­sel and Lip­stadt attor­ney Antho­ny] Julius won because the pro­fes­sor of mod­ern his­to­ry at Cam­bridge had demol­ished Irv­ing’s schol­ar­ship. Richard J. Evans went through Irv­ing’s sources and pro­duced an exhaus­tive 740-page analy­sis which detailed how Irv­ing had twist­ed evi­dence in the Nazi inter­est. Irv­ing had cen­sored him­self as well as the past by cut­ting ref­er­ences to death camps from his ear­ly work when it was reprint­ed. Evans has writ­ten a book on the affair—Lying about Hitler: His­to­ry, Holo­caust, and the David Irv­ing Tri­al. You are free to buy it in Amer­i­ca and read the pro­fes­sor’s account of the case and reflec­tions on his­tor­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion. I’ve no doubt it is a seri­ous study. Evans is the author of In Defense of His­to­ry, a patient cri­tique of the wild sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of post­mod­ernist the­o­ry. You were meant to be free to read Lying about Hitler in Britain. But last week, Evans’ pub­lish­ers, Heine­mann, a branch of the Ran­dom House con­glom­er­ate, ordered that the book should be pulped. [Jus­tice] Gray’s ver­dict, which came after years of col­lect­ing evi­dence and months of cross-exam­i­na­tion in an enor­mous­ly expen­sive tri­al, might as well nev­er have hap­pened. Heine­mann said they did not dare pub­lish because Irv­ing was appeal­ing against Gray’s rul­ing. In fact, Irv­ing has been refused per­mis­sion to appeal, and it is that deci­sion he is con­test­ing. In the very unlike­ly event of Irv­ing win­ning and the Court of Appeal agree­ing to con­sid­er Gray’s con­dem­na­tion, the crush­ing evi­dence against him should deny him vic­to­ry. Gran­ta Books cer­tain­ly think so and snapped up Lying about Hitler. Gran­ta did­n’t ‘see any ter­ri­ble legal night­mares’ and was ‘very enthu­si­as­tic and keen to pub­lish.’ We shall still be able to make up our own minds about Evans’ writ­ing. If the sto­ry stopped there, the moral of the cen­sor­ship of Evans would mere­ly be that robust authors should think hard before sign­ing a con­tract with Ran­dom House.” (“With­out Prej­u­dice: A Ploy Named Sue” by Nick Cohen; The Observ­er [Lon­don]; 3/18/2001.)

9. The views and work of Ber­tels­mann his­to­ri­an Baven­damm and the actions of Ran­dom House sub­sidiary Heine­mann in pulp­ing the Evans book should be com­pared with the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk.

10. Mr. Emory has dealt with this book exten­sive­ly. Mr. Emory believes that, like The Turn­er Diaries (also pub­lished by Nation­al Van­guard Books), the book is actu­al­ly a blue­print for what is going to take place. It is a nov­el about a Nazi takeover of the Unit­ed States in the mid­dle of the 21st cen­tu­ry. The book describes the Third Reich going under­ground, buy­ing into the Amer­i­can media, and tak­ing over the coun­try. “It assumes that Hitler’s war­rior elite—the SS—didn’t give up their strug­gle for a White world when they lost the Sec­ond World War. Instead their sur­vivors went under­ground and adopt­ed some of their tac­tics of their ene­mies: they began build­ing their eco­nom­ic mus­cle and buy­ing into the opin­ion-form­ing media. A cen­tu­ry after the war they are ready to chal­lenge the democ­rats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Amer­i­cans, who have begun to have their fill of gov­ern­ment-enforced mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism and ‘equal­i­ty.’ ” (From the back cov­er of Ser­pen­t’s Walk by “Ran­dolph D. Calver­hall;” Copy­right 1991 [SC]; Nation­al Van­guard Books; 0–937944-05‑X.)

11. This process is described in more detail in a pas­sage of text, con­sist­ing of a dis­cus­sion between Wrench (a mem­ber of this Under­ground Reich) and a mer­ce­nary named Less­ing. “The SS . . . what was left of it . . .had busi­ness objec­tives before and dur­ing World War II. When the war was lost they just kept on, but from oth­er places: Bogo­ta, Asun­cion, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Mex­i­co City, Colom­bo, Dam­as­cus, Dac­ca . . . you name it. They real­ized that the world is head­ing towards a ‘cor­po­racra­cy;’ five or ten inter­na­tion­al super-com­pa­nies that will run every­thing worth run­ning by the year 2100. Those super-cor­po­ra­tions exist now, and they’re already divid­ing up the pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing of food, trans­port, steel and heavy indus­try, oil, the media, and oth­er com­modi­ties. They’re already divid­ing up the pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing of food, trans­port, steel and heavy indus­try, oil, the media, and oth­er com­modi­ties. They’re most­ly con­glom­er­ates, with fin­gers in more than one pie . . . .We, the SS, have the say in four or five. We’ve been com­pet­ing for the past six­ty years or so, and we’re slow­ly gain­ing . . . . About ten years ago, we swung a merge, a takeover, and got vot­ing con­trol of a super­corp that runs a small but sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the Amer­i­can media. Not open­ly, not with bands and trum­pets or swastikas fly­ing, but qui­et­ly: one huge cor­po­ra­tion cud­dling up to anoth­er one and gen­tly munch­ing it up, like a great, gub­bing amoe­ba. Since then we’ve been replac­ing exec­u­tives, push­ing some­body out here, bring­ing some­body else in there. We’ve swing pro­gram con­tent around, too. Not much, but a lit­tle, so it won’t show. We’ve cut down on ‘nasty-Nazi’ movies . . . good guys in white hats and bad guys in black SS hats . . . lov­able Jews ver­sus fiendish Ger­mans . . . and we have media psy­chol­o­gists, ad agen­cies, and behav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion spe­cial­ists work­ing on image changes . . . . But all we ever hear about are the poor, inno­cent Jews and the awful ‘Holo­caust,’ when, in fact, there nev­er was an ‘exter­mi­na­tion pol­i­cy,’ a ‘Final Solu­tion,’ or any­thing like it!” (Ibid.; pp. 42–43.)

12. The vision of the future pre­sent­ed in this book should appear sober­ing under the cir­cum­stances. In light of this vision, the actions of Ran­dom House (and Ber­tels­mann) sub­sidiary Heine­mann in destroy­ing the Evans book and the views and actions of offi­cial Ber­tels­mann his­to­ri­an Dirk Baven­damm, the award giv­en to Mid­del­hoff would appear to be less than appro­pri­ate.

Discussion

7 comments for “FTR #298 Update on German Corporate Control Over American Media”

  1. [...] FTR #298: Ger­man cor­po­rate con­trol over amer­i­can media [...]

    Posted by Once Upon a Secret de Mimi Alford: Ramdom House se paie un Démocrate? | Lys-d'Or | February 8, 2012, 2:54 pm
  2. Ger­man pub­lish­ing giant Axel Springer just gob­bled up Busi­ness Insid­er and, accord­ing to the arti­cle below, despite the rather high price paid, Axel Springer’s appetite for more US media firms has yet to be sat­ed:

    Mash­able
    The Ger­man media barons who want to buy up more U.S. media com­pa­nies

    By Jason Abbruzzese
    9/29/2015

    Busi­ness Insid­er founder Hen­ry Blod­get had­n’t ever real­ly heard of Axel Springer until a year ago.

    Now, they’re his boss­es.

    Axel bought BI on Tues­day in a deal that stunned many media watch­ers for its hefty $442-mil­lion price tag — almost dou­ble what Jeff Bezos paid for the Wash­ing­ton Post just two years ago.

    What is less sur­pris­ing is the buy­er. Axel Springer SE might not be a house­hold name in the U.S., but it’s a major play­er in Europe.

    With impe­r­i­al fer­vor to expand its scope to U.S. read­ers, Axel Springer has also been steadi­ly invest­ing in U.S.-based dig­i­tal star­tups includ­ing Ozy.com, Mic.com and NowThis Media.

    Axel is based in Berlin, has about 14,000 employ­ees and brought in around $3.4 bil­lion in rev­enue in 2014. Its main hold­ings are in Ger­man news­pa­pers includ­ing Bild, a tabloid, and Die Welt, a high-brow dai­ly paper.

    Blod­get made the admis­sion about his ear­ly igno­rance of Axel dur­ing a con­fer­ence call fol­low­ing the announce­ment of the acqui­si­tion, not­ing that the com­pa­ny first came up on his radar when BI Pres­i­dent Julie Hansen vis­it­ed the com­pa­ny’s head­quar­ters.

    ...

    Axel’s acqui­si­tion of BI imme­di­ate­ly gives the Ger­man com­pa­ny a place in the U.S. dig­i­tal media mar­ket. Many of the oth­er major dig­i­tal media star­tups includ­ing Vice, Buz­zFeed and Vox have tak­en hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in invest­ments that have effec­tive­ly made them too expen­sive for oth­er com­pa­nies to buy. BI remained among the few that were big enough to make a dif­fer­ence but afford­able enough to go after.

    While most of Axel’s Euro­pean hold­ings are of the lega­cy news­pa­per and mag­a­zine type, the com­pa­ny has been mak­ing inroads on dig­i­tal media through a vari­ety of invest­ments.

    In Octo­ber 2014, Axel made a $20 mil­lion invest­ment in Ozy Media, a dig­i­tal news start­up. Its also dip­ping its toe in some pure tech such as its invest­ment in vir­tu­al real­i­ty com­pa­ny Jaunt. Its dig­i­tal prop­er­ties now account for around 70% of its prof­its.

    Dan O’Keefe, gen­er­al part­ner at ven­ture cap­i­tal firm Tech­nol­o­gy Crossover Ven­tures, which has stakes in oth­er dig­i­tal media com­pa­nies, said that there is a clear fit between what Axel has been look­ing for and what BI does.

    “I thought it made a lot of sense,” he said. “It gives Axel Springer a nice toe hold in a com­plete­ly dig­i­tal, eng­lish-speak­ing prop­er­ty here in the Unit­ed States.”

    Springer’s inter­est in busi­ness-focused media was laid bare when reports began to emerged ear­li­er in 2015 that it was in talks to buy the Finan­cial Times. It came as some sur­prise when it was out­bid by Japan­ese media con­glom­er­ate Nikkei that end­ed up pay­ing $1.3 bil­lion for the salmon-col­ored insti­tu­tion.

    O’Keefe not­ed that there aren’t too many oth­er com­pa­nies like BI that have been able to cap­ture a younger, online audi­ence.

    “It’s chal­leng­ing. Few have done it suc­cess­ful­ly,” he said. “I do think that assets such as those deserve a pre­mi­um val­u­a­tion.”

    ...

    That being said, Axel paid about nine times as much as BI’s pro­ject­ed rev­enue for 2015 — con­sid­ered pricey for this kind of media deal. On the oth­er hand, it is far less than the price tag for the FT, which sold for near­ly 35 times its prof­it.

    The deal had pro­duced some­thing of a nar­ra­tive that Axel had set­tled for BI after miss­ing out on the FT.

    Not so, said Axel Exec­u­tive VIce Pres­i­dent Christoph Keese.

    Keese said talks with BI began well before the FT sit­u­a­tion, although he could not com­ment on Axel’s report­ed bid on the salmon-col­ored paper.

    As for where the com­pa­ny is head­ed next, Keese said Axel has kicked the tires on a wide vari­ety of media com­pa­nies in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. They’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly thirst­ing for anoth­er, but they’re far from out of the game.

    “We have looked into almost every inter­est­ing prospect on the US mar­ket that has been talked about for the past 18 or 24 months,” he said. “We decid­ed not to go with some and we decid­ed to go with oth­ers.”

    “As for where the com­pa­ny is head­ed next, Keese said Axel has kicked the tires on a wide vari­ety of media com­pa­nies in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. They’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly thirst­ing for anoth­er, but they’re far from out of the game.”
    So Axel Springer might be done with its cur­rent round of cor­po­rate feast­ing. Or not. It has­n’t decid­ed yet. But if it does decide to make more inroads into for­eign media mar­kets, Axel Springer may find it has com­pe­ti­tion from the oth­er Ger­man media giant with an appetite for for­eign acqui­si­tions, Ber­tels­mann. Although, since Ber­tels­mann appears to be try­ing to diver­si­fy away from pub­lish­ing with its numer­ous pur­chas­es over the past year, com­pe­ti­tion with Axel Springer for for­eign media firms may not be a prob­lem:

    The Wall Street Jour­nal
    Ber­tels­mann Says Its Buy­ing Spree Isn’t Over
    Media giant’s many piece­meal deals are an effort to diver­si­fy amid chal­lenges to pub­lish­ing

    By Ellen Emmer­entze Jervell
    May 5, 2015 12:05 p.m. ET

    BERLIN—Media con­glom­er­ate Ber­tels­mann SE & Co. is hedg­ing its bet on pub­lish­ing.

    The com­pa­ny last year spent more than €1 bil­lion ($1.12 bil­lion) world-wide on acqui­si­tions, buy­ing a tele­vi­sion-pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, a ser­vice provider for fash­ion e‑retailers, a logis­tics firm and a bill-col­lec­tion agency. It also acquired U.S. e‑learning com­pa­ny Relias Learn­ing, pay­ing rough­ly $540 mil­lion, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter, mark­ing Bertelsmann’s biggest Amer­i­can acqui­si­tion since it bought pub­lish­er Ran­dom House in 1998. Since ear­ly 2014, it has bought com­pa­nies at a pace of more than one a month.

    “We want to diver­si­fy even more,” said Chief Exec­u­tive Thomas Rabe. “We will keep up this brisk pace.”

    As a close­ly held com­pa­ny, Ber­tels­mann doesn’t have to appease activist share­hold­ers, although it does have bond­hold­ers. Mr. Rabe says run­ning a pri­vate com­pa­ny lets him avoid mov­ing rash­ly, even as he reshapes Bertelsmann’s core media busi­ness­es for the dig­i­tal age. He is grad­u­al­ly sell­ing wan­ing busi­ness­es like print-pub­lish­ing and expand­ing in online video, through deals like the acqui­si­tion of Van­cou­ver-based YoBo­Ho, a pro­duc­er of fam­i­ly pro­gram­ming on YouTube, announced on April 21. As with its oth­er acqui­si­tions, terms weren’t dis­closed.

    The ques­tion for Ber­tels­mann is whether scat­ter­ing efforts over a wider area is smarter than a tight focus on pub­lish­ing, espe­cial­ly when the pub­lish­ing busi­ness is nav­i­gat­ing tricky new Inter­net and e‑book waters. An indi­ca­tion of how well Bertelsmann’s strat­e­gy is work­ing may come Thurs­day, when it reports first-quar­ter earn­ings.

    Aside from a brief for­ay into chick­en farm­ing in the 1960s, diver­si­fi­ca­tion out­side of the media indus­try is new for Ber­tels­mann. For most of its 180-year his­to­ry, Ber­tels­mann was a book pub­lish­er. Found­ed in 1835, the com­pa­ny for a cen­tu­ry pub­lished Chris­t­ian lit­er­a­ture and hym­nals.

    In the 1930s it sup­port­ed the Nazi regime, pub­lish­ing nation­al­is­tic and some­times anti-Semit­ic lit­er­a­ture, and grew rich as the military’s main book sup­pli­er, accord­ing to an offi­cial com­pa­ny his­to­ry. Shut by the Allies, Ber­tels­mann soon reopened, launched a book club and by the 1950s was boom­ing.

    The book club recent­ly closed, a vic­tim of the Inter­net. Mr. Rabe believes diver­si­fi­ca­tion will help ensure Ber­tels­mann itself doesn’t share that fate. In light of that, Ber­tels­mann has moved into busi­ness­es includ­ing TV pro­duc­tion, call-cen­ter oper­a­tion, music-rights man­age­ment and online edu­ca­tion.

    Media still account­ed for rough­ly 70% of Bertelsmann’s €16.7 bil­lion in rev­enue last year. It is co-own­er of the biggest con­sumer book-pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny in the world, the Pen­guin Ran­dom House joint ven­ture with Pear­son PLC, ham­mered out in 2012. Online learn­ing and ser­vice-out­sourc­ing are rel­a­tive­ly new fields for the com­pa­ny, but those two new “pil­lars” of its busi­ness already boost­ed com­pa­ny mar­gins last year, said the 49-year-old Mr. Rabe. He aims to boost annu­al rev­enue to €20 bil­lion with­in five years.

    Asked whether Ber­tels­mann is inter­est­ed in tak­ing full con­trol of Pen­guin Ran­dom House, Mr. Rabe says that hinges first on what Pear­son does. In Octo­ber, Pear­son will have the option to sell its stake, and Ber­tels­mann would then have the option of buy­ing it. Ber­tels­mann hasn’t decid­ed what to do, but says the book pub­lish­ing busi­ness is doing very well, and that it seems sen­si­ble for Ber­tels­mann to take over the shares because pub­lish­ing has been its core busi­ness for almost 200 years.

    Bertelsmann’s 2014 rev­enue was its high­est in sev­en years. Its net prof­it, how­ev­er, was hurt by one of its “declin­ing busi­ness­es,” in Mr. Rabe’s words: the print­ing busi­ness. Rev­enue at its mag­a­zine pub­lish­er, Gruner + Jahr, also declined last year. Mr. Rabe said he is strug­gling to mon­e­tize the mag­a­zine busi­ness, but that he is “look­ing at ways to turn it around.” Ber­tels­mann is work­ing on trim­ming down its print­ing busi­ness.

    Bertelsmann’s approach con­trasts with some rivals that have been com­pelled by activists to pare ancil­lary oper­a­tions. Once-sprawl­ing French con­glom­er­ate Viven­di SA, for exam­ple, recent­ly bowed to investor pres­sure and sold its videogames and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions units—assets that account­ed for more than half of its revenue—to focus on media.

    Mr. Rabe’s strat­e­gy gets sup­port from the company’s share­hold­ers: three foun­da­tions that togeth­er hold 80%, and heirs to founder Carl Ber­tels­mann, the Mohn fam­i­ly, who hold 20%.

    ...

    His acqui­si­tions are pos­si­ble in part thanks to some can­ny dis­pos­als. In 2000, Ber­tels­mann decid­ed to sell its 50% stakes in AOL Europe and AOL Aus­tralia to Amer­i­ca Online Inc. short­ly before the dot-com bub­ble burst, pock­et­ing fat prof­its. In 2008 it sold its 50% stake in the record music com­pa­ny Sony BMG Music Enter­tain­ment to Sony Corp. before online stream­ing gut­ted the music indus­try.

    Ber­tels­mann has been acquis­i­tive for more than a decade, but it has been under Mr. Rabe that it aggres­sive­ly branched out beyond media.

    The objec­tive, Mr. Rabe says, is “find­ing the right seg­ments” for invest­ment.

    Soon after becom­ing CEO he iden­ti­fied edu­ca­tion as a promis­ing field, par­tic­u­lar­ly online and in the U.S. In 2014, he bought a stake in online-course provider Udac­i­ty. Last year he des­ig­nat­ed edu­ca­tion as one of Bertelsmann’s three future core busi­ness­es, along­side media and ser­vices.

    In the ser­vices seg­ment, he expand­ed into busi­ness­es relat­ed to sup­ply-chain man­age­ment, pay­ment pro­cess­ing and bill-col­lec­tion for online busi­ness­es.

    Mov­ing judi­cious­ly and tak­ing the long view are hall­marks of pri­vate com­pa­nies but “we know that being pri­vate­ly owned can bring prob­lems,” said Zacharias Saut­ner, a finance pro­fes­sor at Frank­furt School of Finance and Man­age­ment. With lim­it­ed out­side pres­sure, man­agers of diver­si­fied pri­vate firms face less scruti­ny of deci­sions on how to allo­cate resources among divi­sions, he said. “Who’s to con­trol that the mon­ey ends up where it should?”

    But crit­i­cism of diver­si­fi­ca­tion has come “under much rethink­ing” over the past decade, says Har­vard Busi­ness School Pro­fes­sor Bharat Anand. While diver­si­fi­ca­tion may destroy val­ue on aver­age, he said “there are sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ences across diver­si­fied firms” and his research indi­cates that up to 40% of diver­si­fied com­pa­nies cre­ate val­ue.

    Diver­si­fi­ca­tion “works very well for some, not at all for oth­ers,” said Prof. Anand, who has taught pro­grams for senior Ber­tels­mann exec­u­tives.

    Mr. Rabe said he is con­fi­dent Ber­tels­mann is doing what is best for its own­ers.

    “I would say we’re already a very broad com­pa­ny,” he said. “But we want to become even broad­er.”

    “I would say we’re already a very broad company...But we want to become even broad­er.”
    Broad­en­ing Ber­tels­mann through fur­ther acqui­si­tions also prob­a­bly won’t be a prob­lem.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 29, 2015, 5:44 pm
  3. Read this arti­cle from the Novem­ber 4, 2016 Dai­ley Mail (UK) “Mark Zucker­berg and Sheryl Sand­berg are inves­ti­gat­ed by Ger­man pros­e­cu­tors for ‘fail­ing to remove racist posts that vio­late anti-hate speech laws’ from Face­book”

    - The arti­cle is loaded with psy­cho­log­i­cal inu­en­do The both the founder Marc Zucker­berg and his Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer are Jews an Amer­i­cans who are the tar­get in this article/investigation. This can sub­con­cious­ly cause a neg­a­tive bias a lib­er­al or anti ‑Nazi Ger­man Cit­i­zen.

    The fol­low­ing excerpt is sad­ly com­i­cal when one con­sid­ers that Ber­tels­mann is owned by the Under­ground Reich.

    “They include what some might con­sid­er mere­ly angry polit­i­cal rants but also clear exam­ples of racist hate speech and calls to vio­lence laced with ref­er­ences to Nazi-era geno­cide. Fol­low­ing a pub­lic out­cry and pres­sure from Ger­man politi­cians, Face­book this year hired Arva­to, a busi­ness ser­vices unit of Ber­tels­mann, to mon­i­tor and delete racist posts.”

    One has to ask the ques­tion if the Nazi linked Face­book investor Peter Thiele had any influ­ence on this selec­tion.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3906588/German-prosecutors-investigate-Facebook-hate-postings.html

    Mark Zucker­berg and Sheryl Sand­berg are inves­ti­gat­ed by Ger­man pros­e­cu­tors for ‘fail­ing to remove racist posts that vio­late anti-hate speech laws’ from Face­book

    Ger­man pros­e­cu­tors are inves­ti­gat­ing Face­book founder Mark Zucker­burg over alle­ga­tions that the site failed to remove racist posts.

    Attor­ney Chan-jo Jun has filed a com­plaint to courts in Munich alleg­ing the com­pa­ny broke nation­al laws against hate speech and sedi­tion.

    Face­book’s rules for­bid bul­ly­ing, harass­ment and threat­en­ing lan­guage, but crit­ics say it does not do enough to enforce them.

    The site has also been accused of fail­ing to staunch a tide of racist and threat­en­ing posts on the social net­work dur­ing an influx of migrants into Europe.

    Pros­e­cu­tors in Ham­burg ear­li­er this year reject­ed a sim­i­lar com­plaint by Jun on the grounds that the region­al court lacked juris­dic­tion because Face­book’s Euro­pean oper­a­tions are based in Ire­land.

    A spokesman for Jun’s legal team said: ‘There is a dif­fer­ent view in Bavaria.

    ‘Upon Jun’s request, Bavar­i­an Jus­tice Min­is­ter Win­fried Baus­back said that Ham­burg’s view was wrong and Ger­man law does indeed apply to some of the offences,’ it said.

    Jun’s com­plaint named Face­book founder and chief exec­u­tive Zucker­berg and nine oth­er man­agers at the com­pa­ny, includ­ing Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Sheryl Sand­berg.

    Face­book said it had not vio­lat­ed Ger­man law and was work­ing on fight­ing hate speech online.

    A spokesman said: ‘We are not com­ment­ing on the sta­tus of a pos­si­ble inves­ti­ga­tion but we can say that the alle­ga­tions lack mer­it and there has been no vio­la­tion of Ger­man law by Face­book or its employ­ees.’

    Jun has com­piled a list of 438 post­ings that were flagged as inap­pro­pri­ate but not delet­ed over the past year.

    They include what some might con­sid­er mere­ly angry polit­i­cal rants but also clear exam­ples of racist hate speech and calls to vio­lence laced with ref­er­ences to Nazi-era geno­cide.

    Fol­low­ing a pub­lic out­cry and pres­sure from Ger­man politi­cians, Face­book this year hired Arva­to, a busi­ness ser­vices unit of Ber­tels­mann, to mon­i­tor and delete racist posts.

    A rash of online abuse and vio­lent attacks against new­com­ers to Ger­many accom­pa­nied the influx of hun­dreds of thou­sands of migrants last year, which led to a rise in the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the anti-immi­grant Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) par­ty and has put pres­sure on Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel.

    Posted by Anonymous | November 5, 2016, 2:22 pm
  4. There’s a pret­ty notable sto­ry in the pub­lish­ing busi­ness emerg­ing: Ger­man pub­lish­ing giant Axel Springer is effec­tive­ly tak­ing itself pri­vate. The part­ner in this process of tak­ing Axel Spring pri­vate is Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), which is going to buy out all of the minor­i­ty share­hold­ers at a 40% pre­mi­um. This will leave just KKR and the main share­hold­ers led by Axel Springer’s 76-year-old wid­ow Friede Springer. Friede and CEO Math­ias Doepfn­er con­trol 45.4% between the two of them. Axel Springer’s grand­chil­dren own anoth­er 9.8%, and the remain­ing 44.8% is free float­ing. It’s that 44.8% that KKR is going to buy out, but the stakes owned by the grand­chil­dren could also be sold to KKR, poten­tial­ly giv­ing it a major­i­ty stake. As part of the deal, Friede would be guar­an­teed a say in com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy even if KKR secures a major­i­ty stake.

    As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, KKR also part­nered with Ber­tels­mann in 2009 when they cre­at­ed a joint music ven­ture. Ber­tels­mann bought out KKR’s share in 2013 (for a nice prof­it for KKR), so KKR has a recent his­to­ry of part­ner­ing with Ger­man media giants. KKR has pledged to stay in this busi­ness with Axel Springer for at least 5 years. So it sounds like we might be see­ing a sim­i­lar strat­e­gy here, where KKR acts as the finan­cial mus­cle for a new cor­po­rate strat­e­gy and if it works KKR will get to cash out with a hefty prof­it. It also sug­gests that Axel Springer will almost be entire­ly owned by its main share­hold­ers if KKR ends up sell­ing its shares back to them in five years.

    As the arti­cle also notes, Axel Springer’s main share­hold­ers are also plan­ning on an acqui­si­tion spree. This is at the same time the com­pa­ny issued a prof­it warn­ing. So at the same time Axel Springer is warn­ing about its prof­its, it’s also part­ner­ing with KKR (which has very deep pock­ets) to buy up more media prop­er­ties. Keep in mind this in tak­ing place in the con­text of a indus­try melt­down across the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing sec­tor so there’s prob­a­bly quite a few good deals avail­able for an enti­ty with deep pock­ets. And that appears to be the broad­er sto­ry here: one of the biggest pub­lish­ers in the world appears to be get­ting ready to take part of the inevitable con­sol­i­da­tion of the deeply trou­bled dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing indus­try and KKR is going to be financ­ing it:

    Reuters

    KKR offers 40% pre­mi­um to buy out Axel Springer minori­ties

    Dou­glas Busvine
    June 12, 2019 / 12:44 AM

    FRANKFURT (Reuters) — U.S. pri­vate equi­ty investor KKR on Wednes­day offered a 40% pre­mi­um to buy out minor­i­ty investors in Axel Springer in a deal that entrench­es the influ­ence of the main share­hold­ers at the pub­lish­ers of Germany’s Bild news­pa­per.

    The buy­out offer of 63 euros per share puts an equi­ty val­ue of 6.8 bil­lion euros ($7.7 bil­lion) on the busi­ness. It will be sub­ject to accep­tances for 20% of Springer’s share cap­i­tal — a thresh­old one ana­lyst said was with­in reach.

    The offer, made in con­cert with main share­hold­ers led by founder Axel Springer’s 76-year-old wid­ow Friede, would guar­an­tee her a say over strat­e­gy even if KKR secures a major­i­ty stake.

    “It’s a part­ner­ship of equals,” CEO Math­ias Doepfn­er told reporters on a con­fer­ence call.

    Between them, Friede Springer and Doepfn­er con­trol 45.4% of Axel Springer. Axel Springer’s grand­chil­dren, Axel Sven and Ari­ane who own a fur­ther 9.8%, are not par­ty to the KKR deal and may decide to sell or reduce their hold­ings, Doepfn­er said.

    The remain­ing 44.8% is in free float and is worth 3 bil­lion euros at the ten­der price. Sub­ject to suc­cess­ful clos­ing, KKR, Friede Springer and Doepfn­er would joint­ly con­trol the com­pa­ny while man­age­ment would remain in place.

    BUYING TIME

    KKR has pledged to stay invest­ed for at least five years.

    This would buy time for Springer, which also pub­lish­es finan­cial news web­site Busi­ness Insid­er, to prospect for acqui­si­tions and build its dig­i­tal clas­si­fieds port­fo­lio, which earns more than four-fifths of its core prof­it.

    “In light of the fast pace of change in the media sec­tor, Axel Springer now needs con­tin­ued organ­ic invest­ments and suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of its strat­e­gy,” said KKR’s Philipp Freise, adding that KKR would sup­port this “in a long-term and sus­tain­able man­ner”.

    A banker famil­iar with the deal said Springer’s main own­ers want­ed to uphold the company’s her­itage in news and take their time to expand its clas­si­fieds busi­ness, eschew­ing the idea of a breakup.

    Springer shares jumped by near­ly 12% to trade almost at the buy­out price. They had ral­lied by 20% last week on news of the KKR plan before steady­ing to close at 56 euros on Tues­day.

    “Our growth plans will require sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in peo­ple, prod­ucts, tech­nol­o­gy and brands over the next years,” said Doepfn­er, adding that the strate­gic part­ner­ship with KKR would cre­ate head­room for organ­ic invest­ments and acqui­si­tions.

    Springer is not in any active merg­er talks now but is on the look­out for oppor­tu­ni­ties, Doepfn­er said. He added that, despite spec­u­la­tion to that effect, eBay’s Euro­pean clas­si­fieds busi­ness was not yet up for sale.

    Ana­lyst Ian Whit­tak­er at Liberum said KKR’s offer for Springer shares would almost cer­tain­ly be accept­ed, adding that it would fuel M&A spec­u­la­tion in Euro­pean dig­i­tal clas­si­fieds at a time of grow­ing eco­nom­ic head­winds.

    PROFIT WARNING

    Even as it dis­closed the KKR buy­out deal, Springer issued a prof­it warn­ing, say­ing it saw a drop in rev­enue in the low sin­gle-dig­it per­cent­age range this year. Its adjust­ed earn­ings before inter­est, tax­a­tion, depre­ci­a­tion and amor­ti­za­tion (EBITDA) face a mid-sin­gle-dig­it drop.

    Look­ing ahead to 2020, the Ger­man pub­lish­er said its invest­ment plans meant that adjust­ed EBITDA would be “sig­nif­i­cant­ly below” the cur­rent year, before an improve­ment expect­ed in the ensu­ing years.

    Doepfn­er said the down­grade was due to the impact on Springer’s flag­ship jobs por­tal, Step­stone, of cycli­cal eco­nom­ic weak­ness and of Britain’s plans to leave the Euro­pean Union.

    Step­stone has also com­plained to the Euro­pean Union over Google’s recent launch of a jobs prod­uct in Ger­many that has grabbed a mar­ket lead overnight, in a reminder of the threat posed to lega­cy media firms by Sil­i­con Valley’s dig­i­tal plat­form giants.

    In bring­ing in KKR, Friede Springer has cho­sen a coun­ter­part with a track record of long-term invest­ments in the Ger­man media sec­tor.

    KKR, togeth­er with Per­mi­ra, bought con­trol of ProSiebenSat.1 in 2007 and sold out in 2014, hav­ing broad­ened the broadcaster’s enter­tain­ment offer­ing and launched a for­ay into e‑commerce.

    The pri­vate equi­ty firm also entered a music rights joint ven­ture with Ber­tels­mann in 2009, sell­ing its stake back to the pub­lish­er four years lat­er.

    ...

    ———-


    KKR offers 40% pre­mi­um to buy out Axel Springer minori­ties” by Dou­glas Busvine; Reuters; 06/12/2019

    “The offer, made in con­cert with main share­hold­ers led by founder Axel Springer’s 76-year-old wid­ow Friede, would guar­an­tee her a say over strat­e­gy even if KKR secures a major­i­ty stake.”

    As we can see, KKR is being brought in a major part­ner, but this is being done in a way that appears to guar­an­tee that ulti­mate con­trol over Axel Springer remains in the hands of its pri­ma­ry share­hold­ers who hap­pen to be the Springer fam­i­ly and CEO Math­ias Doepfn­er:

    ...
    “It’s a part­ner­ship of equals,” CEO Math­ias Doepfn­er told reporters on a con­fer­ence call.

    Between them, Friede Springer and Doepfn­er con­trol 45.4% of Axel Springer. Axel Springer’s grand­chil­dren, Axel Sven and Ari­ane who own a fur­ther 9.8%, are not par­ty to the KKR deal and may decide to sell or reduce their hold­ings, Doepfn­er said.

    The remain­ing 44.8% is in free float and is worth 3 bil­lion euros at the ten­der price. Sub­ject to suc­cess­ful clos­ing, KKR, Friede Springer and Doepfn­er would joint­ly con­trol the com­pa­ny while man­age­ment would remain in place.

    ...

    In bring­ing in KKR, Friede Springer has cho­sen a coun­ter­part with a track record of long-term invest­ments in the Ger­man media sec­tor.

    KKR, togeth­er with Per­mi­ra, bought con­trol of ProSiebenSat.1 in 2007 and sold out in 2014, hav­ing broad­ened the broadcaster’s enter­tain­ment offer­ing and launched a for­ay into e‑commerce.

    The pri­vate equi­ty firm also entered a music rights joint ven­ture with Ber­tels­mann in 2009, sell­ing its stake back to the pub­lish­er four years lat­er.
    ...

    And the plans for this new part­ner­ship appear to revolve around build­ing up Axel Springer’s dig­i­tal clas­si­fieds, which earns the bulk of the com­pa­ny’s prof­its, and acquir­ing new com­pa­nies, which is where KKR’s deep pock­ets could be very use­ful:

    ...
    BUYING TIME

    KKR has pledged to stay invest­ed for at least five years.

    This would buy time for Springer, which also pub­lish­es finan­cial news web­site Busi­ness Insid­er, to prospect for acqui­si­tions and build its dig­i­tal clas­si­fieds port­fo­lio, which earns more than four-fifths of its core prof­it.

    “In light of the fast pace of change in the media sec­tor, Axel Springer now needs con­tin­ued organ­ic invest­ments and suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of its strat­e­gy,” said KKR’s Philipp Freise, adding that KKR would sup­port this “in a long-term and sus­tain­able man­ner”.

    A banker famil­iar with the deal said Springer’s main own­ers want­ed to uphold the company’s her­itage in news and take their time to expand its clas­si­fieds busi­ness, eschew­ing the idea of a breakup.

    ...

    “Our growth plans will require sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in peo­ple, prod­ucts, tech­nol­o­gy and brands over the next years,” said Doepfn­er, adding that the strate­gic part­ner­ship with KKR would cre­ate head­room for organ­ic invest­ments and acqui­si­tions.

    Springer is not in any active merg­er talks now but is on the look­out for oppor­tu­ni­ties, Doepfn­er said. He added that, despite spec­u­la­tion to that effect, eBay’s Euro­pean clas­si­fieds busi­ness was not yet up for sale.

    Ana­lyst Ian Whit­tak­er at Liberum said KKR’s offer for Springer shares would almost cer­tain­ly be accept­ed, adding that it would fuel M&A spec­u­la­tion in Euro­pean dig­i­tal clas­si­fieds at a time of grow­ing eco­nom­ic head­winds.
    ...

    It’s all pret­ty big news for the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing indus­try. It’s also worth not­ing one of the ironies here: Recall how Axel Springer has been the pri­ma­ry cor­po­rate force push­ing the EU to imple­ment poli­cies designed to either reign in the pow­er of the Sil­i­con Val­ley giants like Google or Face­book at least extract some sort of pay­ment from them (via a ‘link tax’ or some­thing sim­i­lar) that flows back to the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing indus­try. Well, now that Axel Springer is shop­ping around for new dig­i­tal acqui­si­tions it’s hard to ignore the grim real­i­ty that the fire sale prices Axel Springer is prob­a­bly going to be for these dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies is due large­ly to the dev­as­tat­ing impact Google and Face­book have had on jour­nal­is­m’s busi­ness mod­el:

    The Week

    How to stop Google and Face­book from stran­gling jour­nal­ism

    Ryan Coop­er
    June 11, 2019

    The last two decades have been per­haps the worst in Amer­i­can his­to­ry for jour­nal­ism. After years of decline, news­room employ­ment fell a fur­ther 23 per­cent from 2008–2017 — a trend which shows no sign of stop­ping.

    There are three big rea­sons why. First, the rise of the inter­net, which under­mined tra­di­tion­al news­pa­per rev­enue mod­els, espe­cial­ly clas­si­fied ads. Sec­ond, the Great Reces­sion, which tanked employ­ment of all kinds. Third and most impor­tant­ly, the rise of online monop­o­lies like Google, Face­book, and Ama­zon.

    It rais­es a ques­tion: How can we stop these cor­po­rate behe­moths from stran­gling the life out of Amer­i­can jour­nal­ism? A good place to start would be break­ing up the tech giants, and reg­u­lat­ing the online adver­tis­ing mar­ket to ensure fair com­pe­ti­tion.

    Spend­ing on dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing is pro­ject­ed to sur­pass the tra­di­tion­al sort in 2019 for the first time, and you will not be sur­prised to learn where that mon­ey is going. Last year, Google alone was esti­mat­ed to make more than $40 bil­lion in online adver­tis­ing with $4.7 bil­lion of that com­ing from news con­tent, accord­ing to a new report from the News Media Alliance. That is near­ly as much as the $5.1 bil­lion the entire Amer­i­can news indus­try earned in online ads. What’s more, Google “only” accounts for 37 per­cent of the online ad mar­ket. Face­book makes up anoth­er 22 per­cent — an effec­tive duop­oly that has only been par­tial­ly dis­rupt­ed by (who else?) Ama­zon, which has moved aggres­sive­ly into the mar­ket over the last few years and now takes up 9 per­cent.

    That is why jour­nal­ism has con­tin­ued to floun­der even as the broad­er econ­o­my has improved a lot, and why even dig­i­tal native com­pa­nies like Buz­zfeed and Vox are strug­gling to keep their heads above water. For instance, as Josh Mar­shall of Talk­ing Points Memo explains, Google runs the major ad mar­ket (Dou­bleClick), is the largest pur­chas­er on that mar­ket (through Adex­change), and has priv­i­leged access to all the valu­able data thus obtained. Its “monop­oly con­trol is almost com­i­cal­ly great,” he writes — and that’s just one com­pa­ny. Just as online ad rev­enue got to the point where it might replace print ads, inter­net behe­moths have sucked up a huge major­i­ty of it, leav­ing news com­pa­nies to fight over scraps, or des­per­ate­ly piv­ot to alter­na­tive rev­enue mod­els like video con­tent or sub­scrip­tions.

    Remark­ably, there appears to be some bipar­ti­san sup­port for reg­u­la­to­ry action to give news com­pa­nies a leg up. Hear­ings are sched­uled on Tues­day for a bill which would grant news com­pa­nies an exemp­tion to antitrust law, reports CNN, “allow­ing them to band togeth­er in nego­ti­a­tions with online plat­forms.”

    This would prob­a­bly be worth try­ing, but it’s like­ly not near­ly aggres­sive enough. The jour­nal­ism indus­try is frag­ment­ed, dam­aged, and cash-poor, and would sure­ly strug­gle to com­pete with Google and Face­book even if it could coor­di­nate prop­er­ly. It’s telling that only Ama­zon — anoth­er gar­gan­tu­an, huge­ly prof­itable tech colos­sus — has man­aged to com­pete even a lit­tle.

    A bet­ter approach would be to sim­ply break up and reg­u­late these com­pa­nies. Fol­low­ing Amer­i­can antitrust law, force Alpha­bet (Google’s par­ent com­pa­ny) to break all its major parts into sep­a­rate com­pa­nies — Google for search, YouTube for video, Dou­bleClick for ads, Ana­lyt­ics for audi­ence analy­sis, and so on. Do the same for Face­book, forc­ing it to split off Insta­gram and What­sapp.

    Then reg­u­late the online ad mar­ket. It is out­ra­geous for one com­pa­ny to both run the major ad mar­ket and have first bite at sales on that mar­ket, because it puts oth­er sell­ers and buy­ers at an unfair dis­ad­van­tage — as Mar­shall notes, “the inter­play between Dou­bleClick and Adex­change is text­book anti-com­pet­i­tive prac­tice.” Break­ing Dou­bleClick out into a dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny would solve that par­tic­u­lar instance of abuse of mar­ket pow­er, but it prob­a­bly would­n’t be the end of it. An online ad sales plat­form (like many inter­net busi­ness­es) has high fixed costs but very low mar­gin­al costs — mean­ing it costs a great deal to set up all the servers and net­works, but almost noth­ing to serve one addi­tion­al ad. Once a com­pa­ny has achieved mas­sive scale, like Google has with Dou­bleClick, it has an ever-increas­ing advan­tage over any would-be com­peti­tors. That’s the clas­sic def­i­n­i­tion of a nat­ur­al monop­oly, which if left to its own devices will cer­tain­ly abuse its mar­ket pow­er just like Gild­ed Age rail­roads.

    There­fore, abuse of mar­ket pow­er should be banned out­right with com­mon car­ri­er reg­u­la­tions man­dat­ing equal prices for equal ser­vices across the whole online ad busi­ness — either that, or Dou­bleClick should be nation­al­ized out­right and run as a pub­lic util­i­ty.

    ...

    ———-

    “How to stop Google and Face­book from stran­gling jour­nal­ism” by Ryan Coop­er; The Week; 06/11/2019

    The last two decades have been per­haps the worst in Amer­i­can his­to­ry for jour­nal­ism. After years of decline, news­room employ­ment fell a fur­ther 23 per­cent from 2008–2017 — a trend which shows no sign of stop­ping.”

    The worst two decades in US his­to­ry for jour­nal­ism. That’s the indus­try trend back­drop for Axel Springer’s acqui­si­tion plans. And the pri­ma­ry cul­prit for this sor­ry state of affairs is unam­bigu­ous­ly the near-monop­oly sta­tus over the dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing busi­ness achieved by Google and Face­book. Google alone almost made as much from news ads as the rest of the entire Amer­i­cans news indus­try com­bined:

    ...
    Spend­ing on dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing is pro­ject­ed to sur­pass the tra­di­tion­al sort in 2019 for the first time, and you will not be sur­prised to learn where that mon­ey is going. Last year, Google alone was esti­mat­ed to make more than $40 bil­lion in online adver­tis­ing with $4.7 bil­lion of that com­ing from news con­tent, accord­ing to a new report from the News Media Alliance. That is near­ly as much as the $5.1 bil­lion the entire Amer­i­can news indus­try earned in online ads. What’s more, Google “only” accounts for 37 per­cent of the online ad mar­ket. Face­book makes up anoth­er 22 per­cent — an effec­tive duop­oly that has only been par­tial­ly dis­rupt­ed by (who else?) Ama­zon, which has moved aggres­sive­ly into the mar­ket over the last few years and now takes up 9 per­cent.

    That is why jour­nal­ism has con­tin­ued to floun­der even as the broad­er econ­o­my has improved a lot, and why even dig­i­tal native com­pa­nies like Buz­zfeed and Vox are strug­gling to keep their heads above water. For instance, as Josh Mar­shall of Talk­ing Points Memo explains, Google runs the major ad mar­ket (Dou­bleClick), is the largest pur­chas­er on that mar­ket (through Adex­change), and has priv­i­leged access to all the valu­able data thus obtained. Its “monop­oly con­trol is almost com­i­cal­ly great,” he writes — and that’s just one com­pa­ny. Just as online ad rev­enue got to the point where it might replace print ads, inter­net behe­moths have sucked up a huge major­i­ty of it, leav­ing news com­pa­nies to fight over scraps, or des­per­ate­ly piv­ot to alter­na­tive rev­enue mod­els like video con­tent or sub­scrip­tions.
    ...

    Even worse, it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble that break­ing up Google in order to sep­a­rate the dif­fer­ent com­po­nents like Dou­bleClick and Adex­change that cre­ate this mar­ket stran­gle­hold still might not real­ly address the fun­da­men­tal prob­lem of hav­ing a monop­oly run­ning the dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing mar­ket. Why? Because the nature of the online ad busi­ness is such that there’s a very high fixed costs to get it set up but min­i­mal costs for expand­ing and that’s a recipe for the cre­ation of a nat­ur­al monop­oly. Some ser­vices, like deliv­er­ing elec­tric­i­ty of water to homes, are nat­ur­al monop­o­lies sim­ply due to the phys­i­cal require­ments of pro­vid­ed those ser­vices. But in this case we have a nat­ur­al monop­oly due to mar­ket dynam­ics that make it effec­tive­ly impos­si­ble for com­peti­tors to dethrone the exist­ing indus­try leader. Dou­bleClick is still going to be dom­i­nat­ing the online ad busi­ness and effec­tive­ly stran­gling the jour­nal­ism indus­try whether it’s a part of Google or not:

    ...
    A bet­ter approach would be to sim­ply break up and reg­u­late these com­pa­nies. Fol­low­ing Amer­i­can antitrust law, force Alpha­bet (Google’s par­ent com­pa­ny) to break all its major parts into sep­a­rate com­pa­nies — Google for search, YouTube for video, Dou­bleClick for ads, Ana­lyt­ics for audi­ence analy­sis, and so on. Do the same for Face­book, forc­ing it to split off Insta­gram and What­sapp.

    Then reg­u­late the online ad mar­ket. It is out­ra­geous for one com­pa­ny to both run the major ad mar­ket and have first bite at sales on that mar­ket, because it puts oth­er sell­ers and buy­ers at an unfair dis­ad­van­tage — as Mar­shall notes, “the inter­play between Dou­bleClick and Adex­change is text­book anti-com­pet­i­tive prac­tice.” Break­ing Dou­bleClick out into a dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny would solve that par­tic­u­lar instance of abuse of mar­ket pow­er, but it prob­a­bly would­n’t be the end of it. An online ad sales plat­form (like many inter­net busi­ness­es) has high fixed costs but very low mar­gin­al costs — mean­ing it costs a great deal to set up all the servers and net­works, but almost noth­ing to serve one addi­tion­al ad. Once a com­pa­ny has achieved mas­sive scale, like Google has with Dou­bleClick, it has an ever-increas­ing advan­tage over any would-be com­peti­tors. That’s the clas­sic def­i­n­i­tion of a nat­ur­al monop­oly, which if left to its own devices will cer­tain­ly abuse its mar­ket pow­er just like Gild­ed Age rail­roads.

    There­fore, abuse of mar­ket pow­er should be banned out­right with com­mon car­ri­er reg­u­la­tions man­dat­ing equal prices for equal ser­vices across the whole online ad busi­ness — either that, or Dou­bleClick should be nation­al­ized out­right and run as a pub­lic util­i­ty.
    ...

    So that’s all going to be a major part of the indus­try con­text in Axel Springer’s upcom­ing acqui­si­tion spree: Google and Face­book have already starved the indus­try of rev­enues and that’s going to be mean a lot of bar­gains. Then there’s the fact that Face­book sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly lied to pub­lish­ers dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign sea­son about the num­ber of view­ers that were watch­ing videos on Face­book, inflat­ing the num­ber of view­ers by up to 900 per­cent accord­ing to a law­suit. As a con­se­quence of these inflat­ed video view­er­ship num­bers, dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tions made the switch to pro­duc­ing video, which sucked resources away from tra­di­tion­al jour­nal­ism, result­ing in the lay­offs of jour­nal­ists. This lie was told by Face­book from July 2015 to June 2016, a pret­ty cru­cial peri­od of time for jour­nal­ism giv­en the US elec­tion. And accord­ing to the law­suit, inter­nal doc­u­ments show this was a lie Face­book was know­ing­ly telling. So Face­book effec­tive­ly lied the dig­i­tal media indus­try into a busi­ness dead end a few years ago which is also part of the indus­try con­text of Axel Springer’s upcom­ing acqui­si­tion spree:

    The Atlantic

    How Facebook’s Chaot­ic Push Into Video Cost Hun­dreds of Jour­nal­ists Their Jobs

    As media com­pa­nies tried to divine the desires of the world’s biggest plat­form, they fired writ­ers and lost their way.

    Alex­is C. Madri­gal and Robin­son Mey­er
    Oct 18, 2018

    Face­book egre­gious­ly over­stat­ed the suc­cess of videos post­ed to its social net­work for years, exag­ger­at­ing the time spent watch­ing them by as much as 900 per­cent, a new legal fil­ing claims. Cit­ing 80,000 pages of inter­nal Face­book doc­u­ments, aggriev­ed adver­tis­ers fur­ther allege that the com­pa­ny knew about the prob­lem for at least a year and did noth­ing.

    The com­pa­ny denies the alle­ga­tions. “This law­suit is with­out mer­it and we’ve filed a motion to dis­miss these claims of fraud. Sug­ges­tions that we in any way tried to hide this issue from our part­ners are false,” said a spokesman for Face­book in a state­ment, adding that the com­pa­ny noti­fied adver­tis­ers as soon as it dis­cov­ered the prob­lem.

    Dur­ing the peri­od of pur­port­ed wrong­do­ing, from July 2015 to June 2016, jour­nal­ists and news­room lead­ers across the coun­try worked to cov­er an unprece­dent­ed pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in an infor­ma­tion land­scape that Face­book was con­stant­ly, and errat­i­cal­ly, trans­form­ing. Even if, as Face­book argues, it did not know­ing­ly inflate met­rics, it set up new and fast-chang­ing incen­tives for video that altered the online ad mar­ket as a whole. As media com­pa­nies des­per­ate­ly tried to do what Face­book want­ed, many made the dis­as­trous deci­sion to “piv­ot to video,” lay­ing off reporters and edi­tors by the dozen. And when views plunged and video’s poor return on invest­ment became more appar­ent, some com­pa­nies piv­ot­ed back, fir­ing video pro­duc­ers by the dozens.

    First was Upwor­thy, once a a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of Facebook’s algo­rith­mic largesse, which rang in 2016 with 14 lay­offs, part of a move into “orig­i­nal video con­tent.” Four months lat­er, Mash­able laid off 30 employ­ees in a piv­ot to “non-news video con­tent.” That Novem­ber, Fusion laid off 70 peo­ple, in part because big bets with­in social video did not gen­er­ate enough rev­enue.

    In Feb­ru­ary 2017, Thril­list’s par­ent com­pa­ny let more than 20 peo­ple go, but was “con­tin­u­ing to dream in video.” In June 2017, Voca­tiv laid off 20 edi­to­r­i­al staff mem­bers “in an orga­ni­za­tion­al shift to an entire­ly video-first strat­e­gy.” Lat­er that month, MTV News laid off at least nine employ­ees and free­lancers, “with an eye toward cre­at­ing more video.” Fox Sports also released 20 writ­ers and edi­tors on the same day, “replac­ing them with a sim­i­lar num­ber of jobs in video.” The next month, Vice fired 60 employ­ees while promis­ing to focus on video pro­duc­tion. In August, Mic dis­missed 25 peo­ple from its news and edi­to­r­i­al depart­ments to refo­cus on “new mixed-media for­mats in social video.”

    But then the bets on video start­ed fail­ing. After fir­ing its writ­ers and edi­tors in June, Fox Sports had hem­or­rhaged 88 per­cent of its audi­ence by September—a stag­ger­ing feat, as traf­fic to sports web­sites usu­al­ly grows when foot­ball returns. That month, Digi­day report­ed that a “side effect of the piv­ot to video” was “audi­ence shrink­age,” cit­ing sim­i­lar declines at Mic and Voca­tiv. Some of these traf­fic slides have con­tin­ued: In April 2018, Mic’s traf­fic sat at 5 mil­lion uniques, down from 17 mil­lion a year ear­li­er.

    In Feb­ru­ary of this year, Vox Media, the pub­lish­er of SB Nation, Eater, and Vox, laid off 50 employ­ees. “Face­book does not offer a viable path to mon­e­tize our in-depth video work,” its chief exec­u­tive lament­ed in a memo. CNN Dig­i­tal elim­i­nat­ed “few­er than 50” posi­tions, includ­ing in the video depart­ment.

    By our count, nation­al media com­pa­nies laid off more than 350 peo­ple from 2016 to 2018, at least part­ly as a result of Facebook’s herky-jerky incen­tives. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, this num­ber doesn’t include local news­pa­pers that dropped staff while chas­ing video dol­lars. Since 2014, news­pa­pers across the Unit­ed States have lost more than 7,000 jobs, shrink­ing by 15 per­cent, accord­ing to the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics.

    ***

    Face­book can’t shoul­der the blame for these lay­offs alone. Media exec­u­tives ulti­mate­ly made these deci­sions, and jour­nal­ism was an unsta­ble indus­try long before the first Face­book video. In a Tues­day Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle, many pub­lish­ers dis­missed the argu­ment that the social net­work was sole­ly to blame for lay­offs.

    But Face­book wrote the rule book, owned the field, and served as the ref­er­ee for the game that strug­gling pub­lish­ers were try­ing to win. If what the suit alleges is true, it now looks like a dis­hon­est umpire, too.

    Start­ing in 2014, Face­book began to report enor­mous video-view­er­ship num­bers, a feat made pos­si­ble by its new­ly alleged infla­tion of met­rics, and also through the company’s con­scious deci­sion to show more videos to users. This sud­den sur­feit of atten­tion was attrac­tive to media com­pa­nies, and espe­cial­ly to those fund­ed by ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, who often demand fast-grow­ing traf­fic num­bers. But pro­duc­ing video requires more time and resources than writ­ing words, so most com­pa­nies had to cut jobs in oth­er areas to allo­cate new resources to the plat­form.

    Around this time, Face­book also began favor­ing videos uploaded to its ser­vice over links to oth­er video sites, such as YouTube and Vimeo. This effec­tive­ly forced out­lets that already had video depart­ments into upload­ing their films to Face­book and play­ing by the social giant’s rules. Then, in August 2015, it debuted Face­book Live, a fea­ture that first let celebrities—and even­tu­al­ly every­one else—stream live video from their mobile phone.

    A few Live videos became enor­mous suc­cess­es, and the media’s own cov­er­age of them—coupled with its undy­ing hope for a tech­no­log­i­cal savior—helped fan the hype. When 800,000 peo­ple watched a pair of Buz­zFeed staffers explode a water­mel­on on April 8, 2016, Mash­able report­ed that the stunt earned “sig­nif­i­cant­ly more view­ers than were turned into all of cable news in the Unit­ed States.” Wired, mean­while, list­ed sev­en TV shows with few­er view­ers than the explod­ing water­mel­on, includ­ing HBO’s Girls. But the com­par­i­son was inapt: A U.S.-based Nielsen view­er watch­ing TV is just not the same as an anony­mous Face­book user, who could be any­where on the globe, dip­ping in and out of a viral video on Facebook’s News Feed. In any case, Buz­zFeed nev­er repeat­ed its suc­cess. But that didn’t stop reporters from being tak­en off the line of duty, while a pro­mo­tion­al video of water being poured on per­me­able con­crete racked up 100 mil­lion views.

    Yet even before the lat­est rev­e­la­tion, it was obvi­ous that Facebook’s video met­rics were not com­pa­ra­ble to indus­try stan­dards. Face­book defined a “view” as some­one watch­ing some­thing for any longer than three sec­onds. YouTube, the company’s main com­peti­tor, defined a view as 30 sec­onds or more. From a retail per­spec­tive, this was like count­ing win­dow shop­pers as con­sumers. It “fun­da­men­tal­ly deval­ues the num­ber-one met­ric of online video,” the YouTu­ber Hank Green wrote in August 2015, dis­cussing view counts. “Ad agen­cies and brands are con­fused enough with­out Face­book mud­dy­ing the waters by call­ing some­thing a view when it is in no way a mea­sure of view­er­ship.”

    Of course, mud­dy­ing the waters in this way was also use­ful for media com­pa­nies look­ing to sell growth sto­ries to investors. “There’s that sense that not all of these dig­i­tal news start-ups will see con­tin­u­ing hock­ey-stick-like growth,” Ken Doc­tor, a prin­ci­pal ana­lyst at the ana­lyt­ics firm Out­sell, told Digi­day in 2016. “Fall behind in growth, and the cur­rent val­ue of these com­pa­nies may plum­met; it’s a momen­tum game, win or lose.”

    Grow­ing view­er­ship on YouTube is a painstak­ing, time-con­sum­ing process. Doing it on your own site is even hard­er. Grow­ing an audi­ence organ­i­cal­ly on Face­book had also become remark­ably dif­fi­cult. There were only two path­ways to grow: Pay to run ads, or make a lot of Face­book video.

    The video views came easy. You could stack up mil­lions in hours, and those three-sec­ond views looked the same in a bar chart as YouTube’s 30-sec­ond ones. New media start-ups like AJ+, NowThis, Mic, and many oth­ers rushed to cre­ate as much Face­book Video as pos­si­ble. At Fusion, where he was edi­tor in chief, Alex­is saw this hap­pen first­hand. Fusion’s text team stopped grow­ing, while the video side explod­ed. Many of Fusion’s video pro­duc­ers were seri­ous jour­nal­ists, but the very labor-inten­sive nature of video meant the news­room had few­er peo­ple out report­ing and more peo­ple mak­ing text slide in and out of the frame.

    It was not just newish, video-heavy play­ers that found them­selves in a bind. Estab­lished pub­lish­ers that had man­aged to build large, link-based Face­book Pages found them­selves star­ing at a News Feed that had been trans­formed into a stack of videos. There was a real dan­ger of text sto­ries get­ting crowd­ed out. Mean­while, Face­book was eat­ing up all the growth in dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing, due in large part to all the con­tent that pub­lish­ers were putting on the plat­form. Our chaos was Facebook’s con­tent. So even if you didn’t run to Face­book Video, it reshaped the infor­ma­tion ecosys­tem in ways that made it hard­er for jour­nal­is­tic insti­tu­tions.

    Facebook’s mis­ad­ven­tures in video par­al­lel oth­er sit­u­a­tions where the com­pa­ny has moved fast to beat a com­peti­tor but bro­ken things along the way. In 2013, it was Face­book muscling into the media-dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness to cut back Twitter’s growth; the com­pa­ny was, to put it mild­ly, unpre­pared for the prob­lems that result­ed. In the company’s effort to push its Live video offer­ing to com­pete with YouTube’s and Twitter’s, the prod­uct launched with­out ade­quate mod­er­a­tion tools. Even this week, after announc­ing new video-call­ing hard­ware that takes aim at sim­i­lar prod­ucts from Alpha­bet and Ama­zon, Face­book gave a mis­lead­ing answer in the press roll­out about the obvi­ous cen­tral con­cern with the device: how the com­pa­ny would use the data it gen­er­at­ed.

    ...

    Face­book over­sees what is prob­a­bly the world’s largest mar­ket for human atten­tion. Time and time again, it has added a new rule to this mar­ket, or cre­at­ed some new way of scor­ing points, seem­ing­ly with­out think­ing about how play­ers would react or adjust to the change. In the past, we’ve assumed Face­book ignored the sys­temic con­se­quences of its actions out of neg­li­gence. Per­haps, as this new law­suit alleges, it was a neg­li­gence so extreme that it rose to the lev­el of fraud.

    ———-

    “How Facebook’s Chaot­ic Push Into Video Cost Hun­dreds of Jour­nal­ists Their Jobs” by Alex­is C. Madri­gal and Robin­son Mey­er; The Atlantic; 10/18/2019

    “Face­book egre­gious­ly over­stat­ed the suc­cess of videos post­ed to its social net­work for years, exag­ger­at­ing the time spent watch­ing them by as much as 900 per­cent, a new legal fil­ing claims. Cit­ing 80,000 pages of inter­nal Face­book doc­u­ments, aggriev­ed adver­tis­ers fur­ther allege that the com­pa­ny knew about the prob­lem for at least a year and did noth­ing.

    Yep, Face­book was telling dig­i­tal pub­lish­ers that videos were get­ting 900 per­cent more view­ers than they actu­al­ly were and the com­pa­ny know­ing­ly told this lie for at least a year. And not just any year. This was from July 2015 to June 2016, accord­ing ot the law­suit, when dig­i­tal pub­lish­ers were going to be mak­ing huge invest­ments in the upcom­ing elec­tion cov­er­age. But Face­book began report­ing enor­mous video-view­er­ship num­bers in 2014, so it sounds like the lie start­ed at least by that point. So dig­i­tal pub­lish­ers did what Face­book advised and switched to cre­at­ing videos. But the promised rev­enues nev­er mate­ri­al­ized:

    ...

    The com­pa­ny denies the alle­ga­tions. “This law­suit is with­out mer­it and we’ve filed a motion to dis­miss these claims of fraud. Sug­ges­tions that we in any way tried to hide this issue from our part­ners are false,” said a spokesman for Face­book in a state­ment, adding that the com­pa­ny noti­fied adver­tis­ers as soon as it dis­cov­ered the prob­lem.

    Dur­ing the peri­od of pur­port­ed wrong­do­ing, from July 2015 to June 2016, jour­nal­ists and news­room lead­ers across the coun­try worked to cov­er an unprece­dent­ed pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in an infor­ma­tion land­scape that Face­book was con­stant­ly, and errat­i­cal­ly, trans­form­ing. Even if, as Face­book argues, it did not know­ing­ly inflate met­rics, it set up new and fast-chang­ing incen­tives for video that altered the online ad mar­ket as a whole. As media com­pa­nies des­per­ate­ly tried to do what Face­book want­ed, many made the dis­as­trous deci­sion to “piv­ot to video,” lay­ing off reporters and edi­tors by the dozen. And when views plunged and video’s poor return on invest­ment became more appar­ent, some com­pa­nies piv­ot­ed back, fir­ing video pro­duc­ers by the dozens.

    ...

    By our count, nation­al media com­pa­nies laid off more than 350 peo­ple from 2016 to 2018, at least part­ly as a result of Facebook’s herky-jerky incen­tives. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, this num­ber doesn’t include local news­pa­pers that dropped staff while chas­ing video dol­lars. Since 2014, news­pa­pers across the Unit­ed States have lost more than 7,000 jobs, shrink­ing by 15 per­cent, accord­ing to the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics.

    ...

    Start­ing in 2014, Face­book began to report enor­mous video-view­er­ship num­bers, a feat made pos­si­ble by its new­ly alleged infla­tion of met­rics, and also through the company’s con­scious deci­sion to show more videos to users. This sud­den sur­feit of atten­tion was attrac­tive to media com­pa­nies, and espe­cial­ly to those fund­ed by ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, who often demand fast-grow­ing traf­fic num­bers. But pro­duc­ing video requires more time and resources than writ­ing words, so most com­pa­nies had to cut jobs in oth­er areas to allo­cate new resources to the plat­form.

    ...

    Grow­ing view­er­ship on YouTube is a painstak­ing, time-con­sum­ing process. Doing it on your own site is even hard­er. Grow­ing an audi­ence organ­i­cal­ly on Face­book had also become remark­ably dif­fi­cult. There were only two path­ways to grow: Pay to run ads, or make a lot of Face­book video.
    ...

    This was an indus­try-wide phe­nom­e­na which means it’s an indus­try-wide deba­cle based on Face­book’s lies. And as the arti­cle reminds us, at the same time Face­book lied the indus­try into this mas­sive strate­gic mis­take, Face­book was eat­ing up more and more online adver­tis­ing con­tent much like Google:

    ...

    It was not just newish, video-heavy play­ers that found them­selves in a bind. Estab­lished pub­lish­ers that had man­aged to build large, link-based Face­book Pages found them­selves star­ing at a News Feed that had been trans­formed into a stack of videos. There was a real dan­ger of text sto­ries get­ting crowd­ed out. Mean­while, Face­book was eat­ing up all the growth in dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing, due in large part to all the con­tent that pub­lish­ers were putting on the plat­form. Our chaos was Facebook’s con­tent. So even if you didn’t run to Face­book Video, it reshaped the infor­ma­tion ecosys­tem in ways that made it hard­er for jour­nal­is­tic insti­tu­tions.
    ...

    As we can see, between Face­book and Google, the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing indus­try has become a lot less sta­ble an indus­try. And this trend appears to be going strong. The indus­try is only get­ting more dis­tressed. It makes for a inter­est play­ing field for a com­pa­ny with Axel Springer’s size. Because it’s clear that the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing indus­try is going to be fac­ing a big shake­out and it’s going to be the giants like Axel Springer who obvi­ous­ly suri­v­ive that shake­out, but unless some­thing is done to address the monop­o­lis­tic pow­er of Google and Face­book on the online ad busi­ness it’s still unclear what it’s going to take to end the dark times for pub­lish­ing beyond sim­ply hav­ing a large per­cent of the com­pe­ti­tion going out of busi­ness and leav­ing a few sur­vivors. So Google and Face­book are basi­cal­ly dri­ving the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing indus­try into a peri­od of dis­tress and con­sol­i­da­tion and right into the arms of giants like Axel Springer with the cash need­ed to pick up dying pub­li­ca­tions for cheap.

    So while gov­ern­ments should def­i­nite­ly be look­ing into antitrust moves against Face­book and Google and inves­ti­gate whether or not the online ad indus­try is effec­tive­ly a nat­ur­al monop­oly that requires spe­cial reg­u­la­tions, keep in mind that Axel Springer is already the largest pub­lish­er in Europe and plan­ning on buy­ing up the com­pe­ti­tion Face­book and Google already crushed. It’s a reminder that the sur­viv­ing media giants might need some antitrust inves­ti­ga­tions of their own after the upcom­ing peri­od of indus­try con­sol­i­da­tion that Google and Face­book made inevitable. Google and Face­book should­n’t have a monop­oly on gen­er­at­ing antitrust con­cerns.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 19, 2019, 3:17 pm
  5. Here’s a set of arti­cles on a poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant shake­up in the US polit­i­cal media mar­ket­place. A shake­up and a cap­ture of that mar­ket by none oth­er than Friede Springer and Math­ias Doepfn­er, the two main share­hold­ers of Axel Springer. Recall how Doepfn­er and Springer took Alex Springer pri­vate in 2019 after a pri­vate equi­ty buy­out by KKR, who togeth­er hold approx­i­mate­ly 45.4% of Alex Springer’s cap­i­tal. And part of the log­ic behind tak­ing the pub­lish­ing giant pri­vate at that point at the time was to ease the future acqui­si­tion of new com­pa­nies. This was four years after the com­pa­ny acquired Busi­ness Insid­er. Doepfn­er and Springer had plans. Big plans. And those big plans fell into place in a big way last month with the acqui­si­tion of Politi­co for more than $1 bil­lion.

    And as we’re going to see, part of what makes this deal so sig­nif­i­cant is that this clear­ly isn’t the last major media acqui­si­tion Axel Springer is plan­ning on mak­ing in the near future. Axios is also on Doepgn­er and Springer’s wish list. So by the time Axel Spring is done with this media buy­out spree, it could end up own­ing a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the US polit­i­cal opin­ion-form­ing media:

    The New York Times

    Politi­co Is Sold to Axel Springer for More Than $1 Bil­lion

    The pub­lish­ing giant will take con­trol of Politi­co, Politi­co Europe and Politico’s tech news site, Pro­to­col.

    By Edmund Lee
    Aug. 26, 2021

    Politi­co, the Wash­ing­ton news site that has pros­pered for years as Belt­way pro­fes­sion­als gob­bled up its scoops and inside-base­ball-style report­ing, will have a new own­er.

    The Ger­man pub­lish­ing giant Axel Springer agreed to buy Politi­co in a deal announced on Thurs­day that could shake up the Wash­ing­ton media scene.

    Springer will take con­trol of Politi­co and its sis­ter site, Politi­co Europe, as well as Politico’s tech news site, Pro­to­col, a rel­a­tive­ly new ven­ture, the com­pa­nies said. The deal, expect­ed to close by the end of the year, is val­ued at more than $1 bil­lion, two peo­ple with knowl­edge of the mat­ter said. The New York Times report­ed last week that Politico’s own­er, Robert Allbrit­ton, was seek­ing $1 bil­lion for the deal. The com­pa­nies did not pub­licly dis­close finan­cial terms.

    Math­ias Döpfn­er, the chief exec­u­tive of Springer, described Politi­co as an “out­stand­ing media com­pa­ny” that has “dis­rupt­ed dig­i­tal polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism.” He added the impor­tance of main­tain­ing Politico’s “edi­to­r­i­al inde­pen­dence and non­par­ti­san report­ing.”

    Mr. Allbrit­ton, who helped found Politi­co in 2007, will remain pub­lish­er of the site, and it will oper­ate sep­a­rate­ly from Springer. “I reach this mile­stone with a sense of sat­is­fac­tion that I hope is shared by every Politi­co,” he said in a state­ment. He also took a jab at oth­ers in the dig­i­tal media space: “We have put the empha­sis on doing rather than boast­ing, and what mul­ti­ple com­peti­tors have aspired to — a con­sis­tent­ly prof­itable pub­li­ca­tion that sup­ports true jour­nal­is­tic excel­lence — we have achieved.”

    Mr. Allbrit­ton and Springer had been in talks for sev­er­al months about a deal for Politi­co, which gen­er­ates about $200 mil­lion a year in rev­enue and has been con­sis­tent­ly prof­itable. The site is avail­able to read­ers free of charge, and its flag­ship newslet­ter, Play­book, is wide­ly read by Washington’s pow­er bro­kers. A high-end sub­scrip­tion ser­vice, Politi­co Pro, gen­er­ates more than half the company’s annu­al rev­enue.

    With a val­ue of more than $1 bil­lion, the deal is one of the most expen­sive media merg­ers in recent mem­o­ry, the equiv­a­lent of five times Politico’s year­ly sales. Buz­zFeed, one of the largest dig­i­tal pub­lish­ers in the coun­try, recent­ly announced a finan­cial trans­ac­tion that would take it pub­lic at a val­u­a­tion of $1.5 bil­lion, or about three times its annu­al rev­enue.

    Springer has been pur­su­ing deals in the Unit­ed States as a way to expand its port­fo­lio. The pub­lish­er has become par­tic­u­lar­ly attract­ed to sub­scrip­tion-based news busi­ness­es. After Springer acquired Busi­ness Insid­er for around $500 mil­lion in 2015, it remade the com­pa­ny to become a sub­scrip­tion-based news out­let and put its scoops behind a pay­wall. (For that deal, Springer paid almost nine times Busi­ness Insider’s rev­enue.) Last year, the com­pa­ny acquired a con­trol­ling stake in Morn­ing Brew, a newslet­ter pub­lish­er.

    Politico’s sub­scrip­tion busi­ness made it an even more attrac­tive tar­get for Springer. The Ger­man pub­lish­er already had a part­ner­ship with Politi­co as a joint own­er in Politi­co Europe. Springer had been look­ing to expand Politi­co Europe, but it couldn’t do so with­out Mr. Allbritton’s con­sent.

    The Politi­co deal has appar­ent­ly quashed Springer’s talks to acquire Axios, a com­pet­ing news start-up found­ed by Jim Van­de­Hei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz, all vet­er­ans of Politi­co. (Mr. Van­de­Hei and John F. Har­ris start­ed Politi­co in 2006 after they left The Wash­ing­ton Post.) Axios’ lead­er­ship has not aggres­sive­ly pur­sued the deal, accord­ing to one of the peo­ple.

    But Mr. Döpfn­er has said that the acqui­si­tion of Politi­co would not pre­vent him from con­tin­u­ing his pur­suit of Axios, accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of his think­ing. How he would resolve the con­flicts that go with own­ing two close­ly com­pet­ing pub­li­ca­tions is unclear.

    When asked in a town-hall-style meet­ing on Thurs­day with Politi­co staffers why he had cho­sen Politi­co over Axios, he described Axios as “an impres­sive­ly suc­cess­ful prod­uct” before say­ing that, when there was the chance to acquire Politi­co, “Why would you con­sid­er any oth­er alter­na­tive?”

    Mr. Döpfn­er still needs to find a top exec­u­tive to man­age the new prop­er­ty. In Feb­ru­ary, Politico’s chief exec­u­tive, Patrick Steel, announced that he would depart. Buy­ing a prop­er­ty like Axios could help Mr. Döpfn­er solve the pend­ing man­age­ment search by installing its lead­ers to run both oper­a­tions, the two peo­ple said.

    Mr. Döpfn­er could not be reached for com­ment. Axel Springer offered a state­ment: “We acquired Politi­co because we believe in its poten­tial. At the same time as a glob­al media com­pa­ny we are always look­ing at strong dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tions to part­ner with.” Lat­er, Springer updat­ed its state­ment to read: “Axel Springer will not acquire Axios.”

    Mr. Allbrit­ton has lost some of his big-name jour­nal­ists in recent years, either to rivals or to upstarts. Three of Politico’s top staff mem­bers — Jake Sher­man, Anna Palmer and John Bres­na­han — left this year to start Punch­bowl News, a com­pet­ing news site. Mr. Sher­man and Ms. Palmer were the hands behind the Play­book newslet­ter. In June, Car­rie Bud­off Brown, a long­time edi­tor at Politi­co, said she would be leav­ing to join NBC News.

    Politico’s near­ly 400 jour­nal­ists are also in the throes of a union­iz­ing effort that could add to the cost of the busi­ness. It’s unclear how Springer will man­age the mount­ing labor issues.

    ...

    ————

    “Politi­co Is Sold to Axel Springer for More Than $1 Bil­lion” by Edmund Lee; The New York Times; 08/26/2021

    Springer has been pur­su­ing deals in the Unit­ed States as a way to expand its port­fo­lio. The pub­lish­er has become par­tic­u­lar­ly attract­ed to sub­scrip­tion-based news busi­ness­es. After Springer acquired Busi­ness Insid­er for around $500 mil­lion in 2015, it remade the com­pa­ny to become a sub­scrip­tion-based news out­let and put its scoops behind a pay­wall. (For that deal, Springer paid almost nine times Busi­ness Insider’s rev­enue.) Last year, the com­pa­ny acquired a con­trol­ling stake in Morn­ing Brew, a newslet­ter pub­lish­er.”

    Spinger is par­tic­u­lar­ly attract­ed to sub­scrip­tion-based news out­lets. That sure sounds like a busi­ness mod­el pred­i­cat­ed on putting more and more con­tent behind a pay­wall. It’s an exam­ple of the kind of changes we can prob­a­bly expect to see in the US polit­i­cal media as a con­se­quence of Springer’s grow­ing own­er­ship of the US media land­scape. On top of all the qui­et edi­to­r­i­al changes that might be tak­ing place behind the scenes. It’s those edi­to­r­i­al changes that are part of what makes the poten­tial buy­out of Axios so dis­turb­ing. Springer and Doepfn­er would end up own­ing two of the major DC-pol­i­tics focused US out­lets. That’s part of why it’s hard to take very seri­ous­ly the vague assur­ances from Springer that the buy­out of Politi­co put an end to their Axios ambi­tions:

    ...
    The Politi­co deal has appar­ent­ly quashed Springer’s talks to acquire Axios, a com­pet­ing news start-up found­ed by Jim Van­de­Hei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz, all vet­er­ans of Politi­co. (Mr. Van­de­Hei and John F. Har­ris start­ed Politi­co in 2006 after they left The Wash­ing­ton Post.) Axios’ lead­er­ship has not aggres­sive­ly pur­sued the deal, accord­ing to one of the peo­ple.

    But Mr. Döpfn­er has said that the acqui­si­tion of Politi­co would not pre­vent him from con­tin­u­ing his pur­suit of Axios, accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of his think­ing. How he would resolve the con­flicts that go with own­ing two close­ly com­pet­ing pub­li­ca­tions is unclear.

    When asked in a town-hall-style meet­ing on Thurs­day with Politi­co staffers why he had cho­sen Politi­co over Axios, he described Axios as “an impres­sive­ly suc­cess­ful prod­uct” before say­ing that, when there was the chance to acquire Politi­co, “Why would you con­sid­er any oth­er alter­na­tive?”

    Mr. Döpfn­er still needs to find a top exec­u­tive to man­age the new prop­er­ty. In Feb­ru­ary, Politico’s chief exec­u­tive, Patrick Steel, announced that he would depart. Buy­ing a prop­er­ty like Axios could help Mr. Döpfn­er solve the pend­ing man­age­ment search by installing its lead­ers to run both oper­a­tions, the two peo­ple said.

    Mr. Döpfn­er could not be reached for com­ment. Axel Springer offered a state­ment: “We acquired Politi­co because we believe in its poten­tial. At the same time as a glob­al media com­pa­ny we are always look­ing at strong dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tions to part­ner with.” Lat­er, Springer updat­ed its state­ment to read: “Axel Springer will not acquire Axios.”
    ...

    Next, here’s a Bloomberg piece from 2019 about KKR tak­ing Axel Springer pri­vate that gives us an insight into part of the motive for the move at the time: being shield­ed from the addi­tion­al scruti­ny that comes with being a pub­licly trad­ed firm will make it eas­i­er to make future acqui­si­tions:

    Bloomberg News

    KKR to Buy Pub­lish­er Axel Springer for $7.7 Bil­lion

    Thomas Muli­er
    Jun 12, 2019

    (Bloomberg) — KKR & Co. agreed to acquire Axel Springer SE in a buy­out that val­ues the Ger­man pub­lish­er at about 6.8 bil­lion euros ($7.7 bil­lion).

    KKR offered to pay 63 euros a share in cash, and the board of the com­pa­ny said it wel­comed the agree­ment in a state­ment Wednes­day. KKR said the price is 32% high­er than the aver­age over the three months before the announce­ment the com­pa­nies were in nego­ti­a­tions over a deal.

    Friede Springer — the wid­ow of the company’s founder with the largest stake — and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Math­ias Doepfn­er sup­port the poten­tial invest­ment and plan to keep their hold­ings.

    A buy­out of minor­i­ty investors would see Axel Springer join Ber­tels­mann, the Ger­man pub­lish­er that owns Pen­guin Ran­dom House, in being shield­ed from the scruti­ny of pub­lic mar­kets.

    With KKR on board, it could also make it eas­i­er for the com­pa­ny to fund acqui­si­tions and cap­i­tal­ize on a bout of tur­moil and retrench­ment in the dig­i­tal media indus­try.

    More pub­lic com­pa­nies are being tak­en pri­vate thanks in large part to buy­out firms’ swelling cash reserves. The pri­vate equi­ty indus­try, includ­ing real estate, debt and ven­ture funds, is sit­ting on about $1.4 tril­lion in unspent cash, accord­ing to data com­piled by Bloomberg, as insti­tu­tion­al investors pour client mon­ey into the funds seek­ing returns.

    Last year, the num­ber of pub­lic-to-pri­vate deals hit its high­est in more than a decade, accord­ing to Bain & Co.’s annu­al pri­vate equi­ty report.

    Dig­i­tal Push

    Doepfn­er has spent almost two decades turn­ing Germany’s biggest pub­lish­er into a dig­i­tal media com­pa­ny, shed­ding print­ing, news­pa­per and mag­a­zine oper­a­tions to push into online news with prod­ucts such as Busi­ness Insid­er and clas­si­fieds sites includ­ing job por­tal Step­stone. It now makes almost three quar­ters of its sales from dig­i­tal busi­ness­es.

    The sec­tor has been look­ing shaki­er in recent years, with sev­er­al news sites clos­ing or cut­ting jobs as their own­ers try to staunch years of loss­es. Old­er news titles are fight­ing back with an increas­ing­ly suc­cess­ful sub­scrip­tion-based busi­ness mod­el, and Alpha­bet Inc.’s Google and Face­book Inc. are look­ing to mus­cle in on the prof­itable clas­si­fieds busi­ness.

    ...

    ———–

    “KKR to Buy Pub­lish­er Axel Springer for $7.7 Bil­lion” by Thomas Muli­er; Bloomberg News; 06/12/2019

    “Friede Springer — the wid­ow of the company’s founder with the largest stake — and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Math­ias Doepfn­er sup­port the poten­tial invest­ment and plan to keep their hold­ings.

    Math­ias Doepfn­er and Friede Springer had big plans in 2019. That’s what the KKR buy­out sig­ni­fied: much big­ger plans for the future. And those plans includ­ed main­tain­ing their sub­stan­tial hold­ings while tak­ing the com­pa­ny pri­vate. In oth­er words, Deopgn­er and Springer desired rel­a­tive­ly greater unchecked pow­er to make deci­sions, includ­ing deci­sions like buy­ing more com­pa­nies:

    ...
    A buy­out of minor­i­ty investors would see Axel Springer join Ber­tels­mann, the Ger­man pub­lish­er that owns Pen­guin Ran­dom House, in being shield­ed from the scruti­ny of pub­lic mar­kets.

    With KKR on board, it could also make it eas­i­er for the com­pa­ny to fund acqui­si­tions and cap­i­tal­ize on a bout of tur­moil and retrench­ment in the dig­i­tal media indus­try.
    ...

    So with the 2021 buy­out of Politi­co we’re see­ing the real­iza­tion of those mys­te­ri­ous plans the com­pa­ny strong­ly hint­ed at in 2019. Plans that seem to include the even­tu­al buy­out of Axios, despite what we’re hear­ing to the con­trary. Friede Springer and Math­ias Döpfn­er are going to have one of the most pow­er­ful voic­es in the US polit­i­cal media land­scape. At least indi­rect­ly. We’re being assured there will be no edi­to­r­i­al med­dling by the new own­ers. Let’s hope so. Because as the fol­low­ing 2015 Alter­Net arti­cle by Max Blu­men­thal reminds us, the his­tor­i­cal edi­to­r­i­al slant of Axel Springer-owned pub­li­ca­tions has an alarm­ing num­ber of par­al­lels to that of Rubert Mur­doch’s own media empire:

    Alter­Net

    Could the Pos­si­ble Sale of Huff­in­g­ton Post to Right-Wing Com­pa­ny Affect Its Edi­to­r­i­al Line?

    by Max Blu­men­thal
    June 03, 2015

    This month, Newsweek qui­et­ly report­ed that a Ger­man media con­glom­er­ate called Axel Springer was the “most seri­ous” con­tender to buy the Huff­in­g­ton Post in the pro­posed sale of the magazine’s cor­po­rate par­ent, AOL, to Ver­i­zon. While Newsweek detailed Springer’s siz­able media hold­ings in Ger­many and beyond, from the tabloid Bild to the news­pa­per Die Welt, it failed to note the strin­gent­ly enforced right-wing edi­to­r­i­al line that makes Springer the Ger­man equiv­a­lent of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

    Among the five pre­am­bles of Springer’s cor­po­rate prin­ci­ples is the require­ment that employ­ees “sup­port the vital rights of the State of Israel.” Jour­nal­ists are also expect­ed to “uphold the prin­ci­ples of a free social mar­ket econ­o­my” and “sup­port the Transat­lantic Alliance and main­tain sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca in the com­mon val­ues of free nations.” The web­page out­lin­ing Springer’s pre­am­bles mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared from the web months before the com­pa­ny entered the bid­ding for the Huff­in­g­ton Post. (An archived ver­sion of the page can be viewed here.)

    The Huff­in­g­ton Post is one of America’s most wide­ly read online news out­lets. While the site’s var­i­ous niche por­tals earn much of their traf­fic through click­bait head­lines and celebri­ty news, the Huff­in­g­ton Post’s pol­i­tics sec­tion has made its mark with slash­ing cov­er­age of the Trans Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship (TPP) trade deal, Likud­nik mega-donors and police bru­tal­i­ty. Huff­in­g­ton Post reporters have not shied from tar­get­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors who pro­mot­ed war on Iran or high­lighting Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s sup­port for a pro­vi­sion in TPP that would reward com­pa­nies that prof­it from slav­ery. Ear­li­er this year, Oba­ma urged House Democ­rats not to read the Huff­in­g­ton Post, com­plain­ing that the out­let report­ed unfair­ly on the free trade agen­da he has been pro­mot­ing. (Full dis­clo­sure: my broth­er, Paul, is a staff writer for the Huffin­gon Post.)

    Springer’s edi­to­r­i­al line offers a stark con­trast to the pro­gres­sive tone of the Huff­in­g­ton Post. Found­ed in 1946 by the jour­nal­ist Axel Springer, the com­pa­ny now holds about $3 bil­lion in assets and over­sees a col­lec­tion of low-brow pub­li­ca­tions most­ly asso­ci­at­ed with what lib­er­al-mind­ed Ger­mans deri­sive­ly refer to as “the boule­vard press.” It was dur­ing the late 1960’s when Springer took a turn to the pop­ulist right, with Axel Springer sic­c­ing his most pop­u­lar tabloid, Bild, against the rad­i­cal left-wing stu­dent move­ment in West Ger­many. The paper homed in on Rudi Dutschke, one of the movement’s most vis­i­ble lead­ers, accus­ing him of con­spir­ing to bring down West Ger­many through vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion while call­ing on patri­ot­ic Ger­mans to “elim­i­nate the trou­ble mak­ers.”

    On April 11, 1968, a lone­ly neo-Nazi mechan­ic and avid Bild read­er named Josef Bach­mann rid­dled Dutschke with bul­lets as he bicy­cled through Berlin. Bach­mann lat­er tes­ti­fied in court that he had devel­oped his view of Dutschke exclu­sive­ly through arti­cles appear­ing in the Springer press and assort­ed jin­go­is­tic rags. As protests explod­ed across West Ger­many, with stu­dents chant­i­ng, “Springer pulled the trig­ger!” Axel Springer direct­ed his edi­tors to call for harsh police crack­downs on the demon­stra­tors while white­wash­ing Bach­mann as a lone mad­man as deranged as his vic­tim, the “red mani­ac” Dutschke. (Dutschke died of injury-relat­ed com­pli­ca­tions in 1979; Springer’s deeply anguished son com­mit­ted sui­cide months lat­er.)

    With the onset of the so-called war on ter­ror, Springer has shift­ed its sights from the rad­i­cal left to the Mus­lim men­ace. A Bild arti­cle warn­ing last August of an epi­dem­ic of Ebo­la import­ed by black migrants from Africa was typ­i­cal of Springer’s cov­er­age. A month ear­li­er, the paper ran a screed by Nicholaus Fest argu­ing that with their “far dis­pro­por­tion­ate crim­i­nal­i­ty of young peo­ple with a Mus­lim back­ground” and sup­posed ten­den­cy toward “anti-Semit­ic pogroms,” Mus­lims had no place in Europe. Fest’s tirade earned cen­sure from the Ger­man Press Coun­cil, which ruled that its big­ot­ed con­tent “was incom­pat­i­ble with the rep­u­ta­tion of the press.”

    Even Springer’s most sup­pos­ed­ly respectable paper, Die Welt, has become a repos­i­to­ry for neo­con­ser­v­a­tive edi­to­ri­al­iz­ing and naked­ly Islam­o­pho­bic dia­tribes. Welt recent­ly anoint­ed the hyper-repres­sive Egypt­ian dic­ta­tor Abdel Fat­tah El-Sisi as “the Luther of the Arab world”; it has pro­claimed that “we should be thank­ful to drone pilots,” accused Mus­lims of insuf­fi­cient oppo­si­tion to ISIS and claimed that ISIS rep­re­sents the true face of Islam. Dur­ing the 2012 cer­e­mo­ny where anti-Mus­lim for­mer Dutch law­mak­er Ayaan Hir­si Ali received the Axel Springer Prize, she appeared to blame lib­er­al defend­ers of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism for the killing spree com­mit­ted by the Nor­we­gian extrem­ist Anders Breivik, claim­ing they left Breivik with “no oth­er choice but to use vio­lence.”

    In keep­ing with its stat­ed com­mit­ment to “uphold the prin­ci­ples of a free social mar­ket econ­o­my,” Springer pub­li­ca­tions have aggres­sive­ly cam­paigned for eco­nom­ic aus­ter­i­ty through­out the Euro­zone. In Feb­ru­ary, Springer’s Bild launched the “We say NO!” cam­paign against new loans to Greece with a giant front-page head­line read­ing, “NEIN!” The tabloid then pub­lished self­ies of hon­est-look­ing, hard-work­ing Bild read­ers hold­ing the paper in defi­ance, grant­i­ng the cam­paign to hol­low out the Greek pub­lic sec­tor with a pop­ulist veen­er. Bild was wide­ly panned for the stunt, includ­ing by the Ger­man Jour­nal­ists Asso­ci­a­tion, which accused the paper of “cross­ing the bor­der into polit­i­cal cam­paign­ing.”

    ...

    ———–

    “Could the Pos­si­ble Sale of Huff­in­g­ton Post to Right-Wing Com­pa­ny Affect Its Edi­to­r­i­al Line?” by Max Blu­men­thal; Alter­Net; 06/03/2015

    Springer’s edi­to­r­i­al line offers a stark con­trast to the pro­gres­sive tone of the Huff­in­g­ton Post. Found­ed in 1946 by the jour­nal­ist Axel Springer, the com­pa­ny now holds about $3 bil­lion in assets and over­sees a col­lec­tion of low-brow pub­li­ca­tions most­ly asso­ci­at­ed with what lib­er­al-mind­ed Ger­mans deri­sive­ly refer to as “the boule­vard press.” It was dur­ing the late 1960’s when Springer took a turn to the pop­ulist right, with Axel Springer sic­c­ing his most pop­u­lar tabloid, Bild, against the rad­i­cal left-wing stu­dent move­ment in West Ger­many. The paper homed in on Rudi Dutschke, one of the movement’s most vis­i­ble lead­ers, accus­ing him of con­spir­ing to bring down West Ger­many through vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion while call­ing on patri­ot­ic Ger­mans to “elim­i­nate the trou­ble mak­ers.””

    Axel Springer nev­er end­ed up pur­chas­ing Huff­in­g­ton Post, going with a Busi­ness Insid­er pur­chase instead that year. But we don’t have to wild­ly guess how the pur­chase of the left-lean­ing Huff­in­g­ton Post would have gone. Axel Springer has decades of his­to­ry and an estab­lished edi­to­r­i­al bent that its pub­li­ca­tions have held over those decades. An estab­lished right-wing edi­to­r­i­al bent that put its pub­li­ca­tions in direct com­pe­ti­tion with Rupert Mur­doch’s media empire:

    ...
    With the onset of the so-called war on ter­ror, Springer has shift­ed its sights from the rad­i­cal left to the Mus­lim men­ace. A Bild arti­cle warn­ing last August of an epi­dem­ic of Ebo­la import­ed by black migrants from Africa was typ­i­cal of Springer’s cov­er­age. A month ear­li­er, the paper ran a screed by Nicholaus Fest argu­ing that with their “far dis­pro­por­tion­ate crim­i­nal­i­ty of young peo­ple with a Mus­lim back­ground” and sup­posed ten­den­cy toward “anti-Semit­ic pogroms,” Mus­lims had no place in Europe. Fest’s tirade earned cen­sure from the Ger­man Press Coun­cil, which ruled that its big­ot­ed con­tent “was incom­pat­i­ble with the rep­u­ta­tion of the press.”

    ...

    In keep­ing with its stat­ed com­mit­ment to “uphold the prin­ci­ples of a free social mar­ket econ­o­my,” Springer pub­li­ca­tions have aggres­sive­ly cam­paigned for eco­nom­ic aus­ter­i­ty through­out the Euro­zone. In Feb­ru­ary, Springer’s Bild launched the “We say NO!” cam­paign against new loans to Greece with a giant front-page head­line read­ing, “NEIN!” The tabloid then pub­lished self­ies of hon­est-look­ing, hard-work­ing Bild read­ers hold­ing the paper in defi­ance, grant­i­ng the cam­paign to hol­low out the Greek pub­lic sec­tor with a pop­ulist veen­er. Bild was wide­ly panned for the stunt, includ­ing by the Ger­man Jour­nal­ists Asso­ci­a­tion, which accused the paper of “cross­ing the bor­der into polit­i­cal cam­paign­ing.”
    ...

    How will this long-estab­lished right-wing edi­to­r­i­al bent bleed into Politi­co’s cov­er­age of US pol­i­tics? Again, we’re told it’s going to be a hands-off own­er­ship. But those decades of right-wing Axel Springer con­tent sug­gests oth­er­wise. And that’s why we should prob­a­bly expect a steady trick­le of arti­cles in the rest of the US polit­i­cal press talk­ing about this or that sur­pris­ing right-wing stance tak­en by Politi­co. At least, we can prob­a­bly expect a trick­le of those kinds of arti­cles in the rest of the US polit­i­cal press that isn’t already owned by Axel Springer.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 9, 2021, 3:27 pm
  6. How is Politi­co going to cov­er the next US insur­rec­tion? That’s one of the many dis­turb­ing ques­tions raised in a Wash­ing­ton Post report last month about the still mys­te­ri­ous pol­i­tics ani­mat­ing Math­ias Döpfn­er, the CEO of Ger­man pub­lish­ing giant Axel Springer, Politi­co’s new own­er. Now, one one lev­el, Döpfn­er’s pol­i­tics aren’t super mys­te­ri­ous. Axel Springer’s lead­ing Ger­man pub­li­ca­tion, Bild, is noto­ri­ous for push­ing the kind of right-wing tabloid con­tent expect­ed on Fox News. Döpfn­er report­ed­ly bris­tles when he is called Ger­many’s Rupert Mur­doch, and yet is sure sounds like that’s exact­ly what he is.

    And then there’s the sto­ry of an dis­turb­ing email sent by Döpfn­er to his clos­est exec­u­tives two weeks before the 2020 elec­tion. A email sim­ply asked, “Do we all want to get togeth­er for an hour in the morn­ing on Novem­ber 3 and pray that Don­ald Trump will again become Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca?”” Döpfn­er sim­ply denied such an email was ever sent when ini­tial­ly asked about it. After being shown the email, Döpfn­er then attempt­ed to brush is off as a sar­cas­tic joke and insists that he’s nev­er been a sup­port­er of Trump. When asked about his pol­i­tics, Döpfn­er describes his views as eclec­tic, call­ing him­self a “non-Jew­ish Zion­ist” with “small‑L lib­er­al” ten­den­cies, deeply con­cerned about racism and homo­pho­bia. Accord­ing to friends, he also pri­vate­ly wor­ries about can­cel cul­ture and iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. So one of the most pow­er­ful peo­ple in the West­ern media land­scape appar­ent­ly has an clos­et affin­i­ty for Trumpian pol­i­tics that he tries to hide by describ­ing his pol­i­tics as ‘eclec­tic’.

    It also turns out that one of his sons works as chief of staff to Peter Thiel. It’s an inter­est­ing detail giv­en the mys­te­ri­ous nature of Döpfn­er rise in the Ger­man pub­lish­ing world, where he was effec­tive­ly hand-picked for lead­er­ship roles by Axel Springer’s wid­ow despite now back­ground in pub­lish­ing. As we’ve seen, Frank­furt-born Peter Thiel has his own inter­est­ing fam­i­ly back­ground with a father who appears to have played in impor­tant role in South Africa’s secret nuclear weapons pro­gram. And now we find one of Döpfn­er’s sons work­ing as Thiel’s chief of staff. Did Thiel and Döpfn­er have the same secret ‘spon­sors’ facil­i­tat­ing their ris­es in the busi­ness world?

    These are the kinds of ques­tions raised by the fol­low­ing report. Ques­tions we have yet to answer. At least answer direct­ly. But that’s part of what makes this a trou­bling sto­ry: you can usu­al­ly deter­mine the pol­i­tics of the own­ers of major media pub­li­ca­tions whether they want to reveal those pol­i­tics or not just by observ­ing the qual­i­ty of the cov­er­age. And in par­tic­u­lar what that cov­er­age does­n’t cov­er. So while Math­ias Döpfn­er may not want to share this per­son­al info, we’re all going to find out one way or anoth­er, like­ly in the form of more and more right-wing spin:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Politico’s new Ger­man own­er has a ‘con­trar­i­an’ plan for Amer­i­can media
    Math­ias Döpfn­er has glob­al ambi­tions for what he calls a more ‘non­par­ti­san’ kind of jour­nal­ism — even as his own pol­i­tics are hard to pin down

    By Sarah Elli­son
    Sep­tem­ber 6, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

    BERLIN — Months after his com­pa­ny bought Politi­co, Math­ias Döpfn­er stood atop Axel Springer’s 19-sto­ry head­quar­ters, gaz­ing out at the dou­ble row of cob­ble­stones that mark the out­line of the demol­ished Berlin Wall, and explained his glob­al ambi­tions. “We want to be the lead­ing dig­i­tal pub­lish­er in democ­ra­cies around the world,” he said.

    A new­com­er to the com­mu­ni­ty of bil­lion­aire media moguls, Döpfn­er is giv­en to bold pro­nounce­ments and vision­ary pre­scrip­tions. He’s con­cerned that the Amer­i­can press has become too polar­ized — lega­cy brands like the New York Times and The Wash­ing­ton Post drift­ing to the left, in his view, while con­ser­v­a­tive media falls under the sway of Trumpian “alter­na­tive facts.” So in Politi­co, the fast-grow­ing Belt­way polit­i­cal jour­nal, he sees a grand oppor­tu­ni­ty.

    “We want to prove that being non­par­ti­san is actu­al­ly the more suc­cess­ful posi­tion­ing,” he said in an inter­view with The Wash­ing­ton Post. He called it his “biggest and most con­trar­i­an bet.”

    How exact­ly Döpfn­er, Axel Springer’s CEO, hopes to define non­par­ti­san jour­nal­ism at an espe­cial­ly frag­ment­ed time for Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is a ques­tion of intense inter­est as he aims to leave his mark on Amer­i­can media. His own pol­i­tics have remained some­thing of a mys­tery, too. But weeks before the 2020 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, he sent a sur­pris­ing mes­sage to his clos­est exec­u­tives, obtained by The Wash­ing­ton Post:

    “Do we all want to get togeth­er for an hour in the morn­ing on Novem­ber 3 and pray that Don­ald Trump will again become Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca?”

    His email was inspired by a news sto­ry he shared about the government’s plans to sue Google for abuse of mar­ket dom­i­nance, an ani­mat­ing issue of his for years. But Döpfn­er went on to argue that Trump had made the right moves on five of what he deemed the six most impor­tant issues of the last half cen­tu­ry — “defend­ing the free democ­ra­cies” against Rus­sia and Chi­na, push­ing NATO allies to up their con­tri­bu­tions, “tax reforms,” and Mid­dle East peace efforts, as well as chal­leng­ing tech monop­o­lies — if falling short, he implied, on cli­mate change.

    “No Amer­i­can admin­is­tra­tion in the last 50 years has done more,” Döpfn­er con­clud­ed.

    Asked about the email, Döpfn­er ini­tial­ly respond­ed with a force­ful denial. “That’s intrin­si­cal­ly false,” he said. “That doesn’t exist. It has nev­er been sent and has nev­er been even imag­ined.”

    When shown a print­out of the text, Döpfn­er allowed a glim­mer of recog­ni­tion. It’s pos­si­ble, he said, that he may have sent the email “as an iron­ic, provoca­tive state­ment in the cir­cle of peo­ple that hate Don­ald Trump,” because that’s exact­ly the kind of iron­ic, provoca­tive thing that Döpfn­er, a gar­ru­lous and enthu­si­as­tic tex­ter, likes to do.

    “That is me,” he said. “That could be.”

    ...

    Axel Springer’s res­olute­ly anti-com­mu­nist founder — Axel C. Springer him­self — placed his head­quar­ters here on the divid­ing line between West and East Berlin six decades ago as a taunt to the author­i­tar­i­an regime on the oth­er side. East Ger­man offi­cials erect­ed high-ris­es to block sight­lines of it, for fear the pub­lish­er would install a news tick­er to beam the head­lines of a free press to its cit­i­zens behind the wall.

    As Döpfn­er attempts to move into the U.S. mar­ket and beyond, he says that he, too, hopes to reach across divid­ing lines — the ones form­ing with­in our democ­ra­cies.

    ...

    Even before the $1 bil­lion pur­chase of Politi­co last year made him one of the most-watched play­ers in Amer­i­can media, Döpfn­er, 59, found a way to make a big impres­sion.

    He’s 6‑foot‑7, often seen in black V‑necks and skin­ny suits that strike a con­ti­nen­tal pose among the self-styled thought lead­ers in the pow­er cor­ri­dors of Davos, Bilder­berg and Sun Val­ley. From an unlike­ly entry into jour­nal­ism as a PhD-hold­ing music crit­ic, the charis­mat­ic edi­tor ascend­ed rapid­ly, gain­ing the trust of Springer’s wid­ow to the extent she essen­tial­ly made him the heir to the com­pa­ny. While oth­er new bil­lion­aires invest in yachts, Döpfn­er built an art muse­um to house his col­lec­tion of female nudes by female artists, said to be the world’s largest.

    Most­ly, though, he’s invest­ing in dig­i­tal news.

    Döpfner’s glob­al expan­sion­ist impuls­es start­ed with print acqui­si­tions; not all were suc­cess­ful. He tried and failed to buy Britain’s con­ser­v­a­tive Dai­ly Tele­graph in 2005; a decade lat­er, his bid for the Finan­cial Times also fell short. By then, his strat­e­gy had turned entire­ly dig­i­tal — sell­ing off Axel Springer’s region­al Ger­man news­pa­pers to build a cash reserve that allowed it to buy a $343 mil­lion major­i­ty share of Insid­er, the sleek New York-based busi­ness news site that caters increas­ing­ly to a young gen­er­al-inter­est audi­ence; minor­i­ty stakes in U.S. dig­i­tal media start-ups Thril­list and NowThis News; and, in 2020, a major­i­ty share of the pop­u­lar dai­ly busi­ness newslet­ter Morn­ing Brew.

    If Döpfner’s ambi­tions are viewed with sus­pi­cion in left-of-cen­ter cir­cles, though, it has a lot to do with the 70-year-old ink-stained prod­uct at the heart of his empire — the pugna­cious, right-lean­ing tabloid Bild.

    Axel Springer’s jew­el in the crown may be Die Welt, a cos­mopoli­tan and right-of-cen­ter nation­al dai­ly news­pa­per. But it’s Bild, the best-sell­ing news­pa­per in all of Europe, that paid the bills for many years. Inspired by racy British tabloids like the Dai­ly Mir­ror and Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, Bild show­cased top­less women in its pages until 2018 and has been known to hype inflam­ma­to­ry and spu­ri­ous sto­ries, such as the lat­er-debunked one about a sup­posed North African sex mob in Frank­furt, and oth­ers that raged against “Woke jar­gon” or oth­er cul­ture-war caus­es. Its aggres­sive report­ing tac­tics are reg­u­lar­ly cen­sured by the local press reg­u­la­tor. But its jour­nal­ism car­ries influ­ence, and its report­ing on cor­rup­tion alle­ga­tions helped spur a for­mer Ger­man president’s res­ig­na­tion in 2012.

    “What makes Bild so influ­en­tial is that every­one thinks Bild is chan­nel­ing the com­mon man, so all the politi­cians read it,” said Ste­fan Nigge­meier, who found­ed a Bild watch­dog site and wrote a book about its role in Ger­man cul­ture. “There is not a news­room in Ger­many that doesn’t start the day by look­ing at what sto­ries Bild has.”

    Despite his 2020 email to col­leagues, which he describes as flip­pant, Döpfn­er insists he has nev­er been a sup­port­er of Trump. In an inter­view with The Post, he describes his own views as eclec­tic, call­ing him­self a “non-Jew­ish Zion­ist” with “small‑L lib­er­al” ten­den­cies, deeply con­cerned about racism and homo­pho­bia. He also wor­ries about what he sees as can­cel cul­ture, and in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions, friends say, he gripes about iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. One of his sons works as the chief of staff to Peter Thiel, the con­ser­v­a­tive-lib­er­tar­i­an tech bil­lion­aire turned MAGA king­mak­er, but Döpfn­er has only met him a few times and says they are not close. He does pro­fess a fond­ness for “con­trar­i­ans,” though, and called provo­ca­teur Tes­la CEO Elon Musk, cur­rent­ly embroiled in lit­i­ga­tion over his noisy attempt to take over Twit­ter and upend its mod­er­a­tion poli­cies, “one of the most inspir­ing peo­ple I’ve ever met.”

    While call­ing for polit­i­cal neu­tral­i­ty from his U.S. media prop­er­ties, Döpfn­er comes from a tra­di­tion of Euro­pean pub­lish­ers who are very much at ease blend­ing ide­ol­o­gy with news. Axel Springer staff in Ger­many are required to sign a pledge com­mit­ting to prin­ci­ples that include a dis­avow­al of racism, sex­ism and polit­i­cal or reli­gious extrem­ism; but also sup­port for a unit­ed Europe, Israeli state­hood and a free-mar­ket econ­o­my.

    “These val­ues are like a con­sti­tu­tion,” he told the Wall Street Jour­nal last year.

    Last year, Döpfn­er ordered the Israeli flag be flown in sol­i­dar­i­ty at com­pa­ny head­quar­ters for a week after sev­er­al anti­se­mit­ic out­bursts at demon­stra­tions in Ger­many that fol­lowed a dead­ly erup­tion of vio­lence in Gaza. Some employ­ees bris­tled, see­ing it as tak­ing sides in the fraught Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict.

    Döpfn­er respond­ed sharply in a staff video call: “I’m being very frank with you: A per­son who has an issue with an Israeli flag being raised for one week here, after anti­se­mit­ic demon­stra­tions, should look for a new job.”

    Con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dits swooned in admi­ra­tion of what they saw as a rebuke of lib­er­al pieties. “All it takes to stop the mad­ness is an adult will­ing to say: no,” tweet­ed for­mer New York Times colum­nist Bari Weiss. But Döpfn­er put it in sim­pler terms when asked about it lat­er by Politi­co staffers: After the Holo­caust, how could a Ger­man com­pa­ny stand for any­thing less than the right of Israel to exist?

    Döpfn­er was the edi­tor of the sec­ond-biggest local news­pa­per in Germany’s sec­ond-most pop­u­lous city, Ham­burg, when he met Friede Springer, the fifth and final wife of Axel Springer, at a din­ner par­ty in 1996. Two years lat­er, at her urg­ing, the company’s super­vi­so­ry board hired him as edi­tor in chief of Die Welt.

    It’s tempt­ing to assume that Springer saw some­thing of her late hus­band — a vig­or­ous and dap­per man who sparred avid­ly with left-wing activists dur­ing Germany’s tumul­tuous 1960s and ’70s and dreamed of reuni­fi­ca­tion with the east — in the swag­ger­ing young jour­nal­ist.

    Instead, she says, she saw a fel­low out­sider. The cor­po­rate brass had under­es­ti­mat­ed her, too — the much-younger nan­ny who mar­ried the boss and who was cer­tain­ly not expect­ed to take a lead­ing role in the com­pa­ny after his death in 1985. When the com­pa­ny strug­gled to sur­vive a peri­od of rapid C‑suite turnover, she looked to Döpfn­er.

    “[They] said he’s much too young, and he’s a music crit­ic, and he has no idea about busi­ness,” she recalled of the reac­tion to her deci­sion to ele­vate Döpfn­er. “I said, ‘I want him.’ And I had the major­i­ty [of shares],’ ” She appoint­ed him CEO in 2002. “After a year, they all said to me, ‘What a good idea!’ ” She chuck­led soft­ly.

    Ear­ly on, Döpfn­er sent Springer a copy of for­mer Wash­ing­ton Post own­er and pub­lish­er Katharine Graham’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, which chron­i­cled her close work­ing rela­tion­ship with leg­endary edi­tor Ben Bradlee. “Per­haps this is a good role mod­el for our cor­po­ra­tion,” Döpfn­er told her.

    But Döpfn­er craved more than steady news­pa­per work with a sup­port­ive pub­lish­er. His father, a finan­cial­ly “unsuc­cess­ful archi­tect, but a free man,” had urged Döpfn­er to become his own boss. So in 2007, Döpfn­er tried to make the leap.

    Crav­ing “the rest­less sleep of the entre­pre­neur,” he says, he scram­bled to buy shares in Axel Springer, eager to prof­it from the company’s wins but also shoul­der “the pres­sure of the poten­tial down­side.” He bor­rowed enough to buy 2 per­cent of the com­pa­ny, brush­ing off his wife Ulrike’s con­cerns: This would be a safe invest­ment, he reas­sured her, under any con­di­tions short of a glob­al finan­cial cri­sis.

    The fol­low­ing year, the mar­ket crashed. “It was quite a night­mare,” Döpfn­er said. Even­tu­al­ly the share price recov­ered, but he remained wary of the fick­le pub­lic mar­kets and in 2019 engaged the New York invest­ment com­pa­ny KKR to take Axel Springer pri­vate to speed its dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Mean­while, Friede Springer estab­lished her suc­ces­sion plan: She sold Döpfn­er a 4.1 per­cent stake in the com­pa­ny and gave him anoth­er 15 per­cent — and then trans­ferred vot­ing rights for her remain­ing 22 per­cent to him.

    The jour­nal­ist had become a bona fide mogul, a role for which Döpfn­er had long been rehears­ing. In 2013 he had trav­eled with his exec­u­tives to soak up Sil­i­con Val­ley cul­ture, doc­u­ment­ing the trip with a fawn­ing video; lat­er, he put him­self in rooms with the titans of the tech world by ini­ti­at­ing the Axel Springer Awards in 2016 to rec­og­nize “out­stand­ing entre­pre­neur­ial per­son­al­i­ties” — among them Mark Zucker­berg of Face­book and Jeff Bezos, founder of Ama­zon and own­er of The Wash­ing­ton Post. But he also put him­self on the map as a busi­ness leader to con­tend with when he penned a fiery open let­ter in 2014 to then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, blast­ing the com­pa­ny as a monop­oly and the entire indus­try for a dis­re­gard for pri­va­cy he said rivaled the East Ger­man Stasi.

    Döpfn­er dis­tin­guished him­self from oth­er media CEOs by “just being ear­ly” to embrace dig­i­tal exper­i­men­ta­tion, said Evan Spiegel, the founder of Snapchat, yet “he’s not will­ing to com­pro­mise on his val­ues around jour­nal­ism in pur­suit of inno­va­tion.” On Spiegel’s last trip to Berlin, they dis­cussed the future of aug­ment­ed real­i­ty. (And Döpfn­er “gift­ed me a pret­ty heavy piece of the Berlin Wall.”)

    Döpfn­er had also jug­gled a roman­tic life as com­plex as a Mur­doch or Musk, hav­ing a child in 2016 with art col­lec­tor Julia Stoschek while remain­ing mar­ried to Ulrike, the moth­er of his three old­er sons.

    But Döpfn­er — now a bil­lion­aire and the indi­vid­ual who con­trols Axel Springer’s largest vot­ing bloc — is still not with­out boss­es.

    KKR exec­u­tives make up much of his advi­so­ry board, and there’s con­stant spec­u­la­tion in Ger­man media that the terms of their deal with Axel Springer have left Döpfn­er rac­ing to gen­er­ate enough cash flow to buy them out of the media prop­er­ties. (Axel Springer has a large, prof­itable clas­si­fied busi­ness that is con­sid­ered ripe for spin­ning off.)

    And his ascen­sion to the top of the pyra­mid has brought ever more scruti­ny.

    As Döpfn­er began seri­ous­ly hunt­ing top-tier U.S. media prop­er­ties, a man­age­r­i­al cri­sis was sim­mer­ing back home. In March 2021, the mag­a­zine Der Spiegel report­ed that Axel Springer was inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct involv­ing the then-edi­tor of Bild. Julian Reichelt was accused of hav­ing inap­pro­pri­ate rela­tion­ships with female trainees who were reward­ed and pro­mot­ed in the work­place.

    The com­pa­ny did a brisk cleanup job. After a rough­ly two-week sus­pen­sion and inves­ti­ga­tion, Axel Springer issued a mis­takes-were-made state­ment that nonethe­less main­tained it had found “no evi­dence what­so­ev­er of sex­u­al harass­ment or coer­cion.” Reichelt was allowed to keep his job with an incre­men­tal demo­tion, assigned to work along­side a co-edi­tor in chief.

    Döpfn­er, mean­while, car­ried on with his U.S. quest. Hop­ing to estab­lish a paid mod­el for jour­nal­ism, he was drawn to Politico’s prof­itable sub­scrip­tion ser­vice Politi­co Pro, which cov­ers in-depth polit­i­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry machi­na­tions for a spe­cial­ty audi­ence of inside-the-Belt­way and busi­ness read­ers. Döpfner’s pre­vi­ous over­tures to buy the com­pa­ny had been rebuffed. It wasn’t until the sum­mer of 2021 when own­er Robert Allbrit­ton learned that Axel Springer was also court­ing Axios — a Politi­co rival start­ed by Politi­co defec­tors — that he agreed to sell.

    But as the deal moved to its clos­ing in Octo­ber, Axel Springer offi­cials learned that the New York Times was prepar­ing a sto­ry about the Reichelt mat­ter. Among the damn­ing dis­clo­sures was a state­ment that one of the editor’s young affair part­ners gave to the com­pa­ny-hired inves­ti­ga­tors: “That’s how it always goes at Bild,” she said. “Those who sleep with the boss get a bet­ter job.”

    Döpfn­er went into cri­sis-man­age­ment mode. He was con­vinced that rivals who loathed Reichelt’s con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics had engi­neered the scan­dal and urged his senior exec­u­tives to pro­mote this the­o­ry, thus under­min­ing the women’s sto­ries. “The only impor­tant thing is that it becomes clear: a few men have a goal,” he wrote in an email obtained by The Post. “The pic­ture here is the evil men. Since the pic­ture is now that of noble defend­ers of women — the pic­ture must get cracks.”

    Cri­sis-PR con­sul­tants advised a more direct strat­e­gy. “The goal for this week will be to change the nar­ra­tive from this sto­ry to the deal close and for­ward motion of the busi­ness,” one wrote on Oct. 18, a day after the Times sto­ry pub­lished.

    This time, Reichelt was fired — on that very day — because the com­pa­ny said he had “failed to main­tain a clear bound­ary between pri­vate and pro­fes­sion­al mat­ters.”

    In a rare pub­lic state­ment, Reichelt told The Post that Döpfn­er “invit­ed me to his home to read me the final report” of the orig­i­nal March 2021 inves­ti­ga­tion, adding that it “did not find any proof for the alle­ga­tions against me. The rea­son for that is that those alle­ga­tions were lies from the begin­ning.” (A per­son close to Axel Springer’s delib­er­a­tions says Döpfn­er only read Reichelt “the appro­pri­ate redact­ed excerpts.”)

    Döpfn­er told The Post that Reichelt “gave me his word that his behav­ior had stopped. But it turned out that he repeat­ed­ly lied to exec­u­tives and me.”

    A day after Reichelt’s fir­ing, Axel Springer com­plet­ed its pur­chase of Politi­co. But the saga was clear­ly still eat­ing at Döpfn­er — who, despite the advice of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions pros, post­ed a self­ie video on YouTube rail­ing against the unspec­i­fied men that he claimed had con­spired to ruin his edi­tor.

    Six months lat­er, at the end of April of this year, Döpfn­er flew to Wash­ing­ton for his tri­umphant Belt­way social debut.

    By then, he had over­seen a few major moves at Politi­co, includ­ing the hir­ing of a new CEO, Goli Sheik­holesla­mi, from New York Pub­lic Radio, and a new exec­u­tive edi­tor, Daf­na Linz­er, for­mer­ly of NBC (both pre­vi­ous­ly worked at The Wash­ing­ton Post), after a nation­al search that had felt out an array of polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism stars from The Post and New York Times. Behind the scenes, Axel Springer had vowed to more than dou­ble Politico’s annu­al rev­enue by 2026; and accord­ing to two peo­ple close to the spe­cif­ic plan­ning process, Politi­co will add reporters in Cal­i­for­nia, New York and over­seas while expand­ing their teams cov­er­ing the courts and the envi­ron­ment.

    Though Döpfn­er is a reg­u­lar at var­i­ous elite big-think con­fer­ences, he had nev­er before attend­ed the White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion din­ner. He made up for lost time, fre­quent­ing five par­ties a day through the week­end and scor­ing an hour-long meet­ing with Antony Blinken. It was a close-enough con­fab that, days lat­er, Döpfn­er mer­it­ed a phone call when the sec­re­tary of state test­ed pos­i­tive for the coro­n­avirus. (Döpfn­er test­ed neg­a­tive.)

    The week­end vis­it would not be pure­ly social, though. Politi­co staff got a first chance to see their new boss engage in high-stakes deci­sion-mak­ing.

    Amid the fes­tiv­i­ties, Matthew Kamin­s­ki, Politico’s edi­tor in chief, pulled Döpfn­er aside. His reporters had obtained a Supreme Court draft opin­ion, writ­ten by Jus­tice Samuel A. Ali­to Jr., sig­nal­ing that the court had vot­ed to strike down the land­mark Roe v. Wade deci­sion.

    Supreme Court leaks were almost unheard of; Sheik­holesla­mi and John Har­ris, the paper’s co-found­ing edi­tor and advi­so­ry board chair­man, want­ed Döpfn­er to under­stand the seis­mic nature of the sto­ry — Politico’s biggest in its 15-year exis­tence, but also one pos­ing legal per­il if the com­pa­ny was forced to pro­tect its source.

    On the after­noon of May 2, Linz­er and Kamin­s­ki pre­pared the sto­ry for pub­li­ca­tion with their reporters while Har­ris and Sheik­holesla­mi got Döpfn­er and his num­ber-two exec­u­tive, Jan Bay­er, on the phone. Bay­er want­ed to know how much it might cost if Politi­co was sued. Döpfn­er, play­ing devil’s advo­cate, asked why it was impor­tant to divulge a draft opin­ion, giv­en that it was like­ly to become offi­cial with­in weeks, accord­ing to three peo­ple famil­iar with the dis­cus­sions, who request­ed anonymi­ty to dis­close sen­si­tive delib­er­a­tions.

    Har­ris explained the obvi­ous news val­ue of the draft opin­ion, and the rep­u­ta­tion­al hit Politi­co would take if it passed up a legit­i­mate scoop of this size. The call last­ed bare­ly 10 min­utes. Accord­ing to one of the peo­ple famil­iar with the call, Döpfn­er told them that if they were con­fi­dent about the valid­i­ty of their report­ing, “you have to run it and you have our sup­port.” Politi­co pub­lished the sto­ry that night.

    “I was imme­di­ate­ly con­vinced that that was done with high­est pro­fes­sion­al seri­ous­ness and that this is a sto­ry of his­toric impor­tance,” Döpfn­er recalled lat­er. “Hon­est­ly, it was not for a sec­ond a real ques­tion to not run the sto­ry.”

    Bare­ly a week lat­er, Döpfn­er had to make a sim­i­lar deci­sion on a sto­ry by Insid­er, which had just won its first Pulitzer for an illus­trat­ed report chron­i­cling an escape from a Chi­nese intern­ment camp. Now they were poised to break a major sto­ry about sex­u­al harass­ment alle­ga­tions against one of Döpfner’s busi­ness-world heroes: Elon Musk.

    The sto­ry was held togeth­er by an ele­ment of tri­an­gu­la­tion: Insid­er did not have an on-the-record inter­view with the SpaceX flight atten­dant whom it report­ed received a $250,000 set­tle­ment from the Musk-found­ed com­pa­ny; but Insider’s reporter had reviewed details of the inci­dent in a signed dec­la­ra­tion from one of her friends, writ­ten to sup­port the woman’s account that Musk exposed him­self and propo­si­tioned her for sex. Musk told Insid­er there was “a lot more to this sto­ry,” which he called “a polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed hit piece.” (Lat­er, he said the “wild” alle­ga­tions were “utter­ly untrue.”)

    Döpfn­er was wary and asked spe­cif­ic ques­tions about how the edi­tors had deter­mined that the sourc­ing was suf­fi­cient for pub­li­ca­tion, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the dis­cus­sions who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to describe a sen­si­tive con­ver­sa­tion.

    But ulti­mate­ly, he said, it was a deci­sion for the edi­tors and their lawyers to make. They pub­lished the sto­ry.

    He told The Post lat­er that it’s essen­tial to grant jour­nal­ists inde­pen­dence. He bris­tles when crit­ics refer to Bild as the Ger­man equiv­a­lent of Fox News or sug­gest that he’s the Ger­man Rupert Mur­doch.

    “That’s pret­ty much the oppo­site of what we want and what we are,” he said. “If media are in one camp or the oth­er, I think that’s con­cep­tu­al­ly wrong.”

    He may aspire to a “non­par­ti­san” niche but he sees no way for media to claim pure neu­tral­i­ty; that’s why Axel Springer lays bare the prin­ci­ples it expects employ­ees to stand for, he said. “But with­in that rar­efied frame­work, we empow­er free deci­sions” — even a sto­ry that alien­ates the boss’s friends or con­tra­dicts the boss’s views.

    “I worked hard in this com­pa­ny,” he added, “that not every jour­nal­ist writes what I think is right.”

    ———-

    “Politico’s new Ger­man own­er has a ‘con­trar­i­an’ plan for Amer­i­can media” By Sarah Elli­son; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 09/06/2022

    “He’s 6‑foot‑7, often seen in black V‑necks and skin­ny suits that strike a con­ti­nen­tal pose among the self-styled thought lead­ers in the pow­er cor­ri­dors of Davos, Bilder­berg and Sun Val­ley. From an unlike­ly entry into jour­nal­ism as a PhD-hold­ing music crit­ic, the charis­mat­ic edi­tor ascend­ed rapid­ly, gain­ing the trust of Springer’s wid­ow to the extent she essen­tial­ly made him the heir to the com­pa­ny. While oth­er new bil­lion­aires invest in yachts, Döpfn­er built an art muse­um to house his col­lec­tion of female nudes by female artists, said to be the world’s largest.”

    He seemed to come out of nowhere in the Ger­man pub­lish­ing world back in the 90s, and now he’s at work trans­form­ing the US media land­scape. One of the most influ­en­tial peo­ple on the plan­et has big plans for more influ­ence. Hence all the inter­est in his per­son­al pol­i­tics. And hence all the con­cern over the mys­te­ri­ous text Math­ias Döpfn­er sent to his clos­est exec­u­tives two weeks before the 2020 elec­tion, pray­ing for Don­ald Trump’s reelec­tion. Döpfn­er first denied the texts exist entire­ly, and then when shown the texts tried to brush them off as a sar­cas­tic joke. He con­tin­ued to deny hav­ing ever sup­port­ed Trump and instead describes his polit­i­cal views as ‘eclec­tic’. When some­one describes their pol­i­tics as ‘eclec­tic’ that’s anoth­er way of say­ing they’d rather not describe them. At least not pub­licly. Oh, and it turns out his son works as Peter Thiel’s chief of staff. It’s like one red flag after anoth­er:

    ...
    How exact­ly Döpfn­er, Axel Springer’s CEO, hopes to define non­par­ti­san jour­nal­ism at an espe­cial­ly frag­ment­ed time for Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is a ques­tion of intense inter­est as he aims to leave his mark on Amer­i­can media. His own pol­i­tics have remained some­thing of a mys­tery, too. But weeks before the 2020 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, he sent a sur­pris­ing mes­sage to his clos­est exec­u­tives, obtained by The Wash­ing­ton Post:

    “Do we all want to get togeth­er for an hour in the morn­ing on Novem­ber 3 and pray that Don­ald Trump will again become Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca?”

    His email was inspired by a news sto­ry he shared about the government’s plans to sue Google for abuse of mar­ket dom­i­nance, an ani­mat­ing issue of his for years. But Döpfn­er went on to argue that Trump had made the right moves on five of what he deemed the six most impor­tant issues of the last half cen­tu­ry — “defend­ing the free democ­ra­cies” against Rus­sia and Chi­na, push­ing NATO allies to up their con­tri­bu­tions, “tax reforms,” and Mid­dle East peace efforts, as well as chal­leng­ing tech monop­o­lies — if falling short, he implied, on cli­mate change.

    “No Amer­i­can admin­is­tra­tion in the last 50 years has done more,” Döpfn­er con­clud­ed.

    Asked about the email, Döpfn­er ini­tial­ly respond­ed with a force­ful denial. “That’s intrin­si­cal­ly false,” he said. “That doesn’t exist. It has nev­er been sent and has nev­er been even imag­ined.”

    When shown a print­out of the text, Döpfn­er allowed a glim­mer of recog­ni­tion. It’s pos­si­ble, he said, that he may have sent the email “as an iron­ic, provoca­tive state­ment in the cir­cle of peo­ple that hate Don­ald Trump,” because that’s exact­ly the kind of iron­ic, provoca­tive thing that Döpfn­er, a gar­ru­lous and enthu­si­as­tic tex­ter, likes to do.

    “That is me,” he said. “That could be.”

    ...

    Despite his 2020 email to col­leagues, which he describes as flip­pant, Döpfn­er insists he has nev­er been a sup­port­er of Trump. In an inter­view with The Post, he describes his own views as eclec­tic, call­ing him­self a “non-Jew­ish Zion­ist” with “small‑L lib­er­al” ten­den­cies, deeply con­cerned about racism and homo­pho­bia. He also wor­ries about what he sees as can­cel cul­ture, and in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions, friends say, he gripes about iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. One of his sons works as the chief of staff to Peter Thiel, the con­ser­v­a­tive-lib­er­tar­i­an tech bil­lion­aire turned MAGA king­mak­er, but Döpfn­er has only met him a few times and says they are not close. He does pro­fess a fond­ness for “con­trar­i­ans,” though, and called provo­ca­teur Tes­la CEO Elon Musk, cur­rent­ly embroiled in lit­i­ga­tion over his noisy attempt to take over Twit­ter and upend its mod­er­a­tion poli­cies, “one of the most inspir­ing peo­ple I’ve ever met.”
    ...

    But we don’t need to read the tea leaves to try to divine Döpfner’s pol­i­tics. The right-wing tabloid nature of his flag­ship pub­li­ca­tion, Bild, is all the evi­dence we need. This is why he’s seen as Ger­many’s Rupert Mur­doch. Actions speak loud­er than words, espe­cial­ly for media CEOs:

    ...
    If Döpfner’s ambi­tions are viewed with sus­pi­cion in left-of-cen­ter cir­cles, though, it has a lot to do with the 70-year-old ink-stained prod­uct at the heart of his empire — the pugna­cious, right-lean­ing tabloid Bild.

    Axel Springer’s jew­el in the crown may be Die Welt, a cos­mopoli­tan and right-of-cen­ter nation­al dai­ly news­pa­per. But it’s Bild, the best-sell­ing news­pa­per in all of Europe, that paid the bills for many years. Inspired by racy British tabloids like the Dai­ly Mir­ror and Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, Bild show­cased top­less women in its pages until 2018 and has been known to hype inflam­ma­to­ry and spu­ri­ous sto­ries, such as the lat­er-debunked one about a sup­posed North African sex mob in Frank­furt, and oth­ers that raged against “Woke jar­gon” or oth­er cul­ture-war caus­es. Its aggres­sive report­ing tac­tics are reg­u­lar­ly cen­sured by the local press reg­u­la­tor. But its jour­nal­ism car­ries influ­ence, and its report­ing on cor­rup­tion alle­ga­tions helped spur a for­mer Ger­man president’s res­ig­na­tion in 2012.

    “What makes Bild so influ­en­tial is that every­one thinks Bild is chan­nel­ing the com­mon man, so all the politi­cians read it,” said Ste­fan Nigge­meier, who found­ed a Bild watch­dog site and wrote a book about its role in Ger­man cul­ture. “There is not a news­room in Ger­many that doesn’t start the day by look­ing at what sto­ries Bild has.”

    ...

    He told The Post lat­er that it’s essen­tial to grant jour­nal­ists inde­pen­dence. He bris­tles when crit­ics refer to Bild as the Ger­man equiv­a­lent of Fox News or sug­gest that he’s the Ger­man Rupert Mur­doch.
    ...

    Final­ly, it’s also worth not­ing with whom Döpfn­er man­aged to score an hour long meet­ing after scor­ing his Politi­co acqui­si­tion: US Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken. This was in April of this year, over a month into the con­flict in Ukraine. It’s the kind of meet­ing that rais­es the ques­tion: who was the big­ger hawk regard­ing Ukraine in that meet­ing?

    ...
    Six months lat­er, at the end of April of this year, Döpfn­er flew to Wash­ing­ton for his tri­umphant Belt­way social debut.

    By then, he had over­seen a few major moves at Politi­co, includ­ing the hir­ing of a new CEO, Goli Sheik­holesla­mi, from New York Pub­lic Radio, and a new exec­u­tive edi­tor, Daf­na Linz­er, for­mer­ly of NBC (both pre­vi­ous­ly worked at The Wash­ing­ton Post), after a nation­al search that had felt out an array of polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism stars from The Post and New York Times. Behind the scenes, Axel Springer had vowed to more than dou­ble Politico’s annu­al rev­enue by 2026; and accord­ing to two peo­ple close to the spe­cif­ic plan­ning process, Politi­co will add reporters in Cal­i­for­nia, New York and over­seas while expand­ing their teams cov­er­ing the courts and the envi­ron­ment.

    Though Döpfn­er is a reg­u­lar at var­i­ous elite big-think con­fer­ences, he had nev­er before attend­ed the White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion din­ner. He made up for lost time, fre­quent­ing five par­ties a day through the week­end and scor­ing an hour-long meet­ing with Antony Blinken. It was a close-enough con­fab that, days lat­er, Döpfn­er mer­it­ed a phone call when the sec­re­tary of state test­ed pos­i­tive for the coro­n­avirus. (Döpfn­er test­ed neg­a­tive.)
    ...

    Keep in mind that we have no rea­son to assume that Axel Springer’s US media buy­ing spree has come to an end. Recall how Axel Springer sig­naled that its pur­chase of Politi­co did­n’t mean an end to its pur­suit of Axios. The influ­ence of Döpfn­er in the US is only set to grow in com­ing decades. And not just the US. Axel Springer is a glob­al pow­er­house and that makes Döpfn­er one of the most influ­en­tial peo­ple on the plan­et. Rupert Mur­doch-league influ­ence. With Rupert Mur­doch-league pol­i­tics, it seems.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 3, 2022, 3:49 pm
  7. There’s been a remark­able and rather dis­turb­ing sto­ry emerg­ing over the last few sto­ry. A meta ‘sto­ry about a sto­ry’ kind of sto­ry involv­ing bil­lion­aires try­ing to intim­i­date edi­tors. But also a sto­ry that involves the remark­able role Axel Springer now plays in the US news media land­scape.

    First, recall the ongo­ing sto­ry about the pla­gia­rism charges that have become part of the high pro­file cru­sade bil­lion­aire Bill Ack­man has been wag­ing against var­i­ous Ivy League uni­ver­si­ties in response to cam­pus protests over the war in Gaza. Pla­gia­rism charges enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pushed against Har­vard Pres­i­dent Clau­dine Gay in coor­di­na­tion with key right-wing Chris Rufo, the archi­tect of much of the con­tem­po­rary right-wing fix­a­tion on ‘wok­e­ness’ in edu­ca­tion and the per­ils of insti­tu­tion­al ‘DEI’ (Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion) pro­grams. Ack­man has effec­tive­ly be oper­at­ing as a pow­er­ful new ally in Rufo’s ongo­ing anti-DEI cam­paign.

    But then Ack­amn expe­ri­enced some blow­back. Or rather, his wife, Neri Oxman, expe­ri­enced the blow­back after Busi­ness Insid­er pub­lished a piece on the pla­gia­rism they were able to find in Oxman’s own PhD the­sis. In response, Ack­man has gone on the war path, not only threat­en­ing to sue Busi­ness Insid­er but pub­licly insist­ing that his wife was the vic­tim of an anti-Semit­ic attack.

    So how has Busi­ness Insid­er’s own­er­ship respond­ed to the charge that Busi­ness Insid­er’s lead­er­ship is moti­vat­ed by anti-Semi­tism? Well, Busi­ness Insid­er’s own­er — Ger­man pub­lish­ing giant Axel Springer, which acquired Busi­ness Insid­er in 2015 — appears to be tak­ing the charges seri­ous­ly. And yet, at the same time, Axel Springer is stand­ing by the facts in the report. So Axel Springer appears to be seri­ous­ly inves­ti­gat­ing whether or not anti-Semi­tism moti­vat­ed a fac­tu­al report on Neri Oxman. It’s the kind of response that has gen­er­at­ed pal­pa­ble dis­may among cur­rent and for­mer Busi­ness Insid­er reporters. Although pre­sum­ably not just Busi­ness Insid­er’s reporters. Don’t for­get that Axel Springer bought Politi­co in 2021 for more than $1 bil­lion.

    And yet, as we’ve seen, this was­n’t an entire­ly unex­pect­ed out­come thanks to the curi­ous pol­i­tics of Axel Springer’s chief Math­ias Doepfn­er (Dopfner/Döpfner). Recall the remark­able report we got back in Sep­tem­ber of 2022 about the dis­turb­ing email sent by Doep­n­er to his clos­est exec­u­tives two weeks before the 2020 elec­tion. The email asked, “Do we all want to get togeth­er for an hour in the morn­ing on Novem­ber 3 and pray that Don­ald Trump will again become Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca?” Doepfn­er denied the email was ever sent when ini­tial­ly asked about it. After being shown the email, Doepfn­er then attempt­ed to brush is off as a sar­cas­tic joke and insists that he’s nev­er been a sup­port­er of Trump. When asked about his pol­i­tics, Doepfn­er describes his views as eclec­tic, call­ing him­self a “non-Jew­ish Zion­ist” with “small‑L lib­er­al” ten­den­cies, deeply con­cerned about racism and homo­pho­bia. Accord­ing to friends, he also pri­vate­ly wor­ries about can­cel cul­ture and iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. As we also learned, Axel Springer staff in Ger­many are required to sign a pledge com­mit­ting to prin­ci­ples that include a dis­avow­al of racism, sex­ism and polit­i­cal or reli­gious extrem­ism; but also sup­port for a unit­ed Europe, Israeli state­hood and a free-mar­ket econ­o­my. So Doepfn­er appears to be very con­ser­v­a­tive — he was root­ing for Trump in 2020, after all — but also an arch-sup­port­er of Israel.

    That’s all part of the con­text of the fol­low­ing report about the direct role Doepfn­er has been play­ing behind the scenes at Busi­ness Insid­er in response to the angry threats issued by bil­lion­aire Bill Ack­man in the wake of Busi­ness Insid­er’s reports high­light­ing the appar­ent pla­gia­rism found in the PhD the­sis of his aca­d­e­m­ic celebri­ty wife Neri Oxman. But there’s anoth­er ‘right-wing bil­lion­aires work­ing togeth­er’ angle to this sto­ry. It appears that Ack­man’s ire towards Busi­ness Insid­er has earn him an ally: Elon Musk, who has his own beef with Busi­ness Insid­er fol­low­ing the out­let’s 2022 report­ing on alle­ga­tions made about Musk expos­ing him­self to a SpaceX flight atten­dant, is now open­ly encour­ag­ing Ack­man to sue the out­let. Ack­man, in turn, has writ­ten posts on X.com prais­ing Musk for his ‘free-speech abso­lutism’. And that brings us to anoth­er iron­ic part of this sto­ry: days ago, a num­ber of left-lean­ing jour­nal­ists dis­cov­ered their X.com accounts had been sus­pend­ed for no appar­ent rea­son. What did they all have in com­mon? They had recent­ly crit­i­cized Musk or Ack­man.

    The jour­nal­ist’s X.com accounts were all restored even­tu­al­ly, with an excuse being giv­en about the accounts acci­den­tal­ly being caught up in anti-spam sweeps. But it’s hard to ignore the mes­sage. The mes­sage that you don’t mess with bil­lion­aires or they will come after you...possibly with Math­ias Doepfn­er’s back­ing. It’s a chill­ing mes­sage. Which is pre­sum­ably the point:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Busi­ness Insid­er sto­ry on Har­vard antagonist’s wife draws owner’s scruti­ny

    The news site’s Ger­man own­er, Axel Springer, plans to review a sto­ry about alleged pla­gia­rism by for­mer MIT pro­fes­sor Neri Oxman, whose bil­lion­aire hus­band, Bill Ack­man, sought to oust Harvard’s pres­i­dent for sim­i­lar aca­d­e­m­ic trans­gres­sions. Its edi­tor defends the sto­ry.

    By Will Som­mer
    Jan­u­ary 8, 2024 at 5:07 a.m. EST

    Busi­ness Insid­er and its Ger­man par­ent com­pa­ny appear to be at odds over its report­ing on pla­gia­rism alle­ga­tions against the wife of a high-pro­file hedge fund man­ag­er.

    The finan­cial news site pub­lished two sto­ries last week alleg­ing that Neri Oxman, a promi­nent for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, had pla­gia­rized repeat­ed­ly in her aca­d­e­m­ic work, includ­ing lift­ing from Wikipedia more than a dozen times in her dis­ser­ta­tion.

    Those sto­ries came after her hus­band, bil­lion­aire investor Bill Ack­man, spent weeks pres­sur­ing his alma mater, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, to oust its pres­i­dent — ini­tial­ly over his con­tention that she had mis­han­dled inci­dents of anti­semitism on cam­pus but lat­er over reports that she had com­mit­ted pla­gia­rism ear­li­er in her career. At one point, Ack­man wrote that a Har­vard stu­dent who com­mit­ted “much less” pla­gia­rism than Clau­dine Gay would be forced out of the uni­ver­si­ty. Gay resigned from the pres­i­den­cy last week.

    But when Busi­ness Insid­er raised pla­gia­rism con­cerns about his wife’s work, Ack­man exco­ri­at­ed the pub­li­ca­tion, accus­ing it of uneth­i­cal jour­nal­ism, promis­ing to review its writ­ers’ work and pre­dict­ing that it would “go bank­rupt and be liq­ui­dat­ed.” In one social media post, he implied that Busi­ness Insider’s inves­ti­ga­tions edi­tor (whom he called “a known anti-Zion­ist”) may have been “will­ing to lead this attack” because Oxman is Israeli.

    ...

    Still, Ackman’s com­plaints seemed to get the atten­tion of Axel Springer, the Ger­man media giant that owns Busi­ness Insid­er. On Sun­day, the com­pa­ny released an unusu­al state­ment say­ing it would “review the process­es” that led up to the arti­cles’ pub­li­ca­tion, while acknowl­edg­ing that the sto­ries were not fac­tu­al­ly wrong.

    “While the facts of the reports have not been dis­put­ed, over the past few days ques­tions have been raised about the moti­va­tion and the process lead­ing up to the report­ing — ques­tions that we take very seri­ous­ly,” the state­ment read.

    Busi­ness Insid­er staffers were sur­prised by the Axel Springer state­ment, which many had not real­ized was com­ing until a New York Times reporter shared it online, accord­ing to a Busi­ness Insid­er employ­ee who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they are not autho­rized to speak pub­licly. A per­son famil­iar with Axel Springer’s oper­a­tions who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to pre­serve com­pa­ny con­fi­dences said Busi­ness Insid­er was involved in the draft­ing of the state­ment.

    In a Sun­day after­noon email to employ­ees that was reviewed by The Wash­ing­ton Post, Busi­ness Insid­er glob­al edi­tor in chief Nicholas Carl­son appeared to push back on the idea that the sto­ries need­ed a review. Carl­son wrote that he would “wel­come” the review but argued for the news val­ue of the sto­ries giv­en Oxman’s posi­tion as what he called a “well-known aca­d­e­m­ic” and start-up founder.

    “I made the call to pub­lish both these sto­ries,” Carl­son wrote. “I stand by our sto­ry and the work that went into it. I know that our process was sound. I know our newsroom’s moti­va­tions are truth and account­abil­i­ty.”

    Busi­ness Insid­er has a his­to­ry of report­ing aggres­sive­ly on the wealthy and pow­er­ful, includ­ing a 2022 sto­ry alleg­ing that Elon Musk exposed him­self to a flight atten­dant, which Musk called a “polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed hit piece.” At least pub­licly, that rep­u­ta­tion hasn’t been an issue for Axel Springer, which pur­chased the site in 2015 for $450 mil­lion and also owns Politi­co.

    But the dis­pute over the Oxman sto­ries appears to touch upon an issue of major impor­tance to Axel Springer and its CEO, Math­ias Döpfn­er: Israel.

    The com­pa­ny sup­ports Israel open­ly in a way that would be unusu­al for a non­par­ti­san Amer­i­can media firm. Axel Springer employ­ees in Ger­many — though not at its U.S. prop­er­ties — must sign a mis­sion state­ment that affirms Israel’s right to exist, among oth­er issues. In 2021, the Israeli flag flew for a week in front of the company’s offices after Döpfn­er man­dat­ed it as a state­ment against anti­semitism, telling any­one who had a prob­lem with the flag to leave the com­pa­ny.

    The per­son famil­iar with Axel Springer’s dis­cus­sions said com­pa­ny lead­ers are con­cerned that the report­ing on Oxman could have been anti­se­mit­ic or anti-Zion­ist — even though it con­sists pri­mar­i­ly of straight­for­ward com­par­isons between Oxman’s pub­li­ca­tions and the texts she alleged­ly pla­gia­rized from.

    While Ack­man hasn’t raised fac­tu­al issues with the arti­cles, he has claimed that the out­let didn’t give him and his wife enough time to com­ment on the sec­ond sto­ry, about Wikipedia pla­gia­rism, with a space of rough­ly two hours on late Fri­day after­noon between when his spokesman was asked for com­ment and when the sto­ry was pub­lished. But Ack­man first went pub­lic with the Wikipedia alle­ga­tions rough­ly an hour before the sto­ry was pub­lished by post­ing on social media about the impend­ing arti­cle, which may have affect­ed Busi­ness Insider’s pub­li­ca­tion sched­ule.

    While Ack­man boost­ed the pla­gia­rism alle­ga­tions against Gay, he has ques­tioned whether the lift­ing of numer­ous para­graphs from Wikipedia can even count as pla­gia­rism. In a 5,100-word series of posts on X on Sat­ur­day night, Ack­man com­pared some forms of pla­gia­rism to spelling errors, say­ing it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er whether pla­gia­rism is “per­va­sive” in an academic’s work.

    ...

    The Axel Springer state­ment prompt­ed con­cern from some reporters over what it said about Busi­ness Insider’s future abil­i­ty to pur­sue inves­ti­ga­tions. In a post on social media, Julia Black, a for­mer Busi­ness Insid­er reporter, said she was “extreme­ly dis­turbed” and con­cerned that reporters cov­er­ing the wealthy wouldn’t be sup­port­ed by the com­pa­ny.

    “I real­ly hope this can become a mis­take we learn from rather than a new prece­dent,” Black wrote.

    ———–

    “Busi­ness Insid­er sto­ry on Har­vard antagonist’s wife draws owner’s scruti­ny” By Will Som­mer; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 01/08/2024

    “But when Busi­ness Insid­er raised pla­gia­rism con­cerns about his wife’s work, Ack­man exco­ri­at­ed the pub­li­ca­tion, accus­ing it of uneth­i­cal jour­nal­ism, promis­ing to review its writ­ers’ work and pre­dict­ing that it would “go bank­rupt and be liq­ui­dat­ed.” In one social media post, he implied that Busi­ness Insider’s inves­ti­ga­tions edi­tor (whom he called “a known anti-Zion­ist”) may have been “will­ing to lead this attack” because Oxman is Israeli.

    Was Neri Oxman the vic­tim of an anti-Semit­ic attack by “a known anti-Zion­ist”? That’s the asser­tion of her bil­lion­aire hus­band Bill Ack­man fol­low­ing Busi­ness Insid­er’s report on the appar­ent pla­gia­rism found in Oxman’s PhD dis­ser­ta­tion. So was it an anti-Semit­ic attack? Or mere­ly the log­i­cal out­come of Ack­man’s suc­cess­ful attack on now-for­mer Har­vard Pres­i­dent Clau­dine Gay that includ­ed pla­gia­rism alle­ga­tions? It’s a ques­tion Busi­ness Insid­er’s own­er, Axel Springer, has appar­ent­ly been wrestling with based on the com­pa­ny’s state­ment about how it would “review the process­es” that led up to the arti­cle’s pub­li­ca­tion...all while acknowl­edg­ing that the sto­ries were not fac­tu­al­ly wrong. Was this a fac­tu­al­ly accu­rate anti-Semit­ic attack on Neri Oxman? Axel Springer is appar­ent­ly tak­ing that accu­sa­tion seri­ous­ly:

    ...
    Still, Ackman’s com­plaints seemed to get the atten­tion of Axel Springer, the Ger­man media giant that owns Busi­ness Insid­er. On Sun­day, the com­pa­ny released an unusu­al state­ment say­ing it would “review the process­es” that led up to the arti­cles’ pub­li­ca­tion, while acknowl­edg­ing that the sto­ries were not fac­tu­al­ly wrong.

    While the facts of the reports have not been dis­put­ed, over the past few days ques­tions have been raised about the moti­va­tion and the process lead­ing up to the report­ing — ques­tions that we take very seri­ous­ly,” the state­ment read.

    Busi­ness Insid­er staffers were sur­prised by the Axel Springer state­ment, which many had not real­ized was com­ing until a New York Times reporter shared it online, accord­ing to a Busi­ness Insid­er employ­ee who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they are not autho­rized to speak pub­licly. A per­son famil­iar with Axel Springer’s oper­a­tions who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to pre­serve com­pa­ny con­fi­dences said Busi­ness Insid­er was involved in the draft­ing of the state­ment.

    ...

    While Ack­man hasn’t raised fac­tu­al issues with the arti­cles, he has claimed that the out­let didn’t give him and his wife enough time to com­ment on the sec­ond sto­ry, about Wikipedia pla­gia­rism, with a space of rough­ly two hours on late Fri­day after­noon between when his spokesman was asked for com­ment and when the sto­ry was pub­lished. But Ack­man first went pub­lic with the Wikipedia alle­ga­tions rough­ly an hour before the sto­ry was pub­lished by post­ing on social media about the impend­ing arti­cle, which may have affect­ed Busi­ness Insider’s pub­li­ca­tion sched­ule.

    While Ack­man boost­ed the pla­gia­rism alle­ga­tions against Gay, he has ques­tioned whether the lift­ing of numer­ous para­graphs from Wikipedia can even count as pla­gia­rism. In a 5,100-word series of posts on X on Sat­ur­day night, Ack­man com­pared some forms of pla­gia­rism to spelling errors, say­ing it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er whether pla­gia­rism is “per­va­sive” in an academic’s work.
    ...

    And note how Oxman isn’t just the aca­d­e­m­ic wife of a high pro­file bil­lion­aire who has been aggres­sive­ly insert­ed him­self into the news cycle in recent months. Oxman is her­self a “well-known aca­d­e­m­ic” and start-up founder. In oth­er words, if Busi­ness Insid­er was to hold back on report­ing embar­rass­ing infor­ma­tion about Oxman, it would­n’t be because such reports about Oxman weren’t news­wor­thy but rather out of def­er­ence to her elite sta­tus, which is the kind of stance that has jour­nal­ists like Julia Black “extreme­ly dis­turbed”:

    ...
    In a Sun­day after­noon email to employ­ees that was reviewed by The Wash­ing­ton Post, Busi­ness Insid­er glob­al edi­tor in chief Nicholas Carl­son appeared to push back on the idea that the sto­ries need­ed a review. Carl­son wrote that he would “wel­come” the review but argued for the news val­ue of the sto­ries giv­en Oxman’s posi­tion as what he called a “well-known aca­d­e­m­ic” and start-up founder.

    “I made the call to pub­lish both these sto­ries,” Carl­son wrote. “I stand by our sto­ry and the work that went into it. I know that our process was sound. I know our newsroom’s moti­va­tions are truth and account­abil­i­ty.”

    ...

    The Axel Springer state­ment prompt­ed con­cern from some reporters over what it said about Busi­ness Insider’s future abil­i­ty to pur­sue inves­ti­ga­tions. In a post on social media, Julia Black, a for­mer Busi­ness Insid­er reporter, said she was “extreme­ly dis­turbed” and con­cerned that reporters cov­er­ing the wealthy wouldn’t be sup­port­ed by the com­pa­ny.

    “I real­ly hope this can become a mis­take we learn from rather than a new prece­dent,” Black wrote.
    ...

    And then we get to what is pre­sum­ably the real dri­ving force behind this sto­ry: Axel Springer CEO Math­ias Doepfn­er has made sup­port for Israel a major part of his pub­lic per­sona. Don’t for­get that Doepfn­er calls him­self as a “non-Jew­ish Zion­ist” with “small‑L lib­er­al” ten­den­cies and Axel Springer staff in Ger­many are required to sign a pledge com­mit­ting to prin­ci­ples that include a dis­avow­al of racism, sex­ism and polit­i­cal or reli­gious extrem­ism; but also sup­port for a unit­ed Europe, Israeli state­hood and a free-mar­ket econ­o­my. We don’t know that it was exclu­sive­ly Doepfn­er who is demand­ing this “review of the process­es”, but we can be con­fi­dent he is the dri­ving force behind those demands:

    ...
    But the dis­pute over the Oxman sto­ries appears to touch upon an issue of major impor­tance to Axel Springer and its CEO, Math­ias Döpfn­er: Israel.

    The com­pa­ny sup­ports Israel open­ly in a way that would be unusu­al for a non­par­ti­san Amer­i­can media firm. Axel Springer employ­ees in Ger­many — though not at its U.S. prop­er­ties — must sign a mis­sion state­ment that affirms Israel’s right to exist, among oth­er issues. In 2021, the Israeli flag flew for a week in front of the company’s offices after Döpfn­er man­dat­ed it as a state­ment against anti­semitism, telling any­one who had a prob­lem with the flag to leave the com­pa­ny.

    The per­son famil­iar with Axel Springer’s dis­cus­sions said com­pa­ny lead­ers are con­cerned that the report­ing on Oxman could have been anti­se­mit­ic or anti-Zion­ist — even though it con­sists pri­mar­i­ly of straight­for­ward com­par­isons between Oxman’s pub­li­ca­tions and the texts she alleged­ly pla­gia­rized from.
    ...

    And then we get to this inter­est­ing tan­gen­tial sto­ry involv­ing bil­lion­aires try­ing to influ­ence the medi­a’s cov­er­age of them: Busi­ness Insid­er also broke the 2022 sto­ry on the alle­ga­tion regard­ing Elon Musk expos­ing him­self to a flight atten­dant, which Musk called a “polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed hit piece”:

    ...
    Busi­ness Insid­er has a his­to­ry of report­ing aggres­sive­ly on the wealthy and pow­er­ful, includ­ing a 2022 sto­ry alleg­ing that Elon Musk exposed him­self to a flight atten­dant, which Musk called a “polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed hit piece.” At least pub­licly, that rep­u­ta­tion hasn’t been an issue for Axel Springer, which pur­chased the site in 2015 for $450 mil­lion and also owns Politi­co.
    ...

    And as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing Tech Dirt piece, Musk and Ack­man appear to be bond­ing over their mutu­al hatred of Busi­ness Insid­er. Bond­ing in the form of Musk tweet­ing out to Ack­man about how he should sue Busi­ness Insid­er and Ack­man respond­ing by thank­ing Musk for be a “Free Speech Abso­lutist” who was will­ing to give Ack­man a plat­form where he could make his case to the world and defend his wife. Days lat­er, Musk’s X.com sud­den­ly banned a num­ber of jour­nal­ists who had been crit­i­cal of Musk or Ack­man recent­ly. The banned jour­nal­ists even­tu­al­ly had their accounts restored, with Musk sug­gest­ing that it was all a mix up where some­times they “do sweeps for spam/scam accounts and some­times real accounts get caught up in them.” In oth­er words, there’s a Musk/Ackman alliance of sen­si­tive bil­lion­aires form­ing, com­mis­er­at­ing, and pre­sum­ably plot­ting ways of pre­vent­ing future hurt­ful report­ing:

    Tech Dirt

    ‘Free Speech Abso­lutist’ Elon Musk Tem­porar­i­ly Bans Jour­nal­ists, As ‘Free Speech Abso­lutist’ Bill Ack­man Threat­ens SLAPP Suit Against Jour­nal­ists

    from the free-speech-only-for-my-friends dept

    Wed, Jan 10th 2024 09:27am — Mike Mas­nick

    On Tues­day morn­ing, for­mer politi­cian Tul­si Gab­bard, who had to have the 1st Amend­ment clear­ly explained to her by a judge after she filed a ridicu­lous law­suit to restrict the free speech of oth­ers, announced that she had cut a deal with Elon Musk to bring a “news show” to ExTwit­ter. Hilar­i­ous­ly, she claimed that she did this because “free­dom of speech is a fun­da­men­tal right in Amer­i­ca” (again, a court had to teach her what that meant not that long ago).

    [see screen­shot of Tul­si Gab­bard’s tweet announc­ing the new part­ner­ship with X]

    At around the exact same time, “free speech abso­lutist” Elon Musk was busy ban­ning a bunch of reporters from ExTwit­ter for say­ing things that upset him and his pal Bill Ack­man.

    The social media plat­form gave no expla­na­tion for the sud­den purge, say­ing only that the accounts “vio­late the X rules.” The X rules pro­hib­it vio­lent or hate­ful speech, child exploita­tion, pri­vate infor­ma­tion shar­ing, and fake infor­ma­tion.

    But the accounts in ques­tion do not post that kind of con­tent. The reporters who were banned include Steven Mona­cel­li, a jour­nal­ist at the Texas Observ­er who cov­ers extrem­ism, and Ken Klip­pen­stein, who cov­ers nation­al secu­ri­ty for The Inter­cept. Last year, Klip­pen­stein pub­lished a piece on the errors with Tesla’s self-dri­ving fea­ture, and Mona­cel­li not­ed that X shad­ow-banned the Inter­cept author since then.

    Mint­Press News reporter Alan MacLeod, who recent­ly has exten­sive­ly cov­ered Israel’s approach to the war in Gaza, and left­ist pod­cast­er Rob Rousseau were also sus­pend­ed Tues­day.

    The accounts for @liamnissan, @zei_squirrel, and the TrueAnon pod­cast were sus­pend­ed, as well. The @liamnissan account posts most­ly comedic com­men­tary, includ­ing crit­i­cisms of Musk. The TrueAnon pod­cast pro­vides left-wing analy­sis of cur­rent polit­i­cal events and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

    The @zei_squirrel account is anoth­er left-lean­ing com­men­ta­tor who has been crit­i­cal of Musk in the past. In a post on their Sub­stack Tues­day, the @zei_squirrel writer not­ed that they had recent­ly begun to crit­i­cize Bill Ack­man, a hedge fund bil­lion­aire and friend of Musk’s who helped lead the cam­paign against for­mer Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Pres­i­dent Clau­dine Gay. Ackman’s wife was recent­ly accused of pla­gia­rism, the same charge that brought down Gay.

    For what it’s worth Ack­man has been going on a bit of a ben­der late­ly fol­low­ing the accu­sa­tions of pla­gia­rism against his wife. He’s been mak­ing up non­sense about how in the “ear­ly days” of 2009 no one thought there was any­thing wrong with straight up copy­ing Wikipedia with­out attri­bu­tion, which is just wrong. Wikipedia uses a Cre­ativeCom­mons Attri­bu­tion-Share­Alike license, which means it expects “attri­bu­tion.” And was not, in any way, in the ear­ly days in 2009.

    Still, Ack­man, who helped push the witch hunt against Clau­dine Gay over her speech, and who is now threat­en­ing to file a laugh­ably bogus SLAPP defama­tion suit against Busi­ness Insid­er for report­ing on his wife’s alleged pla­gia­rism — sug­gest­ing his sup­port for “free speech” is a bit ques­tion­able as well — also false­ly claims that Elon Musk is some­how a sup­port­er of free speech. I mean, the con­tent excerpt­ed in two sep­a­rate tweets just days apart is some­thing else (I’d post screen­shots of the tweets, but Ack­man uses ExTwit­ter like it’s a blog and posts what appear to be tril­lion-word tweets.)

    So, first he claims (false­ly) that because MIT’s integri­ty hand­book didn’t explic­it­ly call out Wikipedia until 2013, it was okay to copy text direct­ly from Wikipedia until then, and that this might some­how be defam­a­to­ry (it is absolute­ly not):

    To be clear, Neri did not use Wikipedia as a source, but only for the def­i­n­i­tions of 15 words and/or terms for her dis­ser­ta­tion.

    While there was no way for us to do this research in the 91 min­utes we were giv­en before Busi­ness Insid­er pub­lished its sto­ry, our lawyers found it in about 24 hours.

    This find­ing wipes away 15, or more than half of the pla­gia­rism claims made by Busi­ness Insid­er at 5:19pm last Fri­day night.

    Accord­ing to the Cor­nell Law Legal Infor­ma­tion Insti­tute: In order to prove “pri­ma facie defama­tion,” “a plain­tiff must show four things: 1) a false state­ment pur­port­ing to be fact; 2) pub­li­ca­tion or com­mu­ni­ca­tion of that state­ment to a third per­son; 3) fault amount­ing to at least neg­li­gence; and 4) dam­ages, or some harm caused to the rep­u­ta­tion of the per­son or enti­ty who is the sub­ject of the state­ment.”

    This leads me to a few ques­tion for the @X legal com­mu­ni­ty. If you look at all of the evi­dence that has emerged over the last few days, do you think Neri has been defamed under the four fac­tor test above?

    As mul­ti­ple peo­ple point­ed out to him in response, the actu­al stan­dard for defama­tion of a pub­lic fig­ure is actu­al mal­ice, and he claims (again, not under­stand­ing the law) that because his wife is “an intense­ly pri­vate per­son” that makes her not a pub­lic fig­ure, which is also… not how any of this works.

    Any­way, just days ear­li­er, Ack­man went on a dif­fer­ent rant (also about his wife) in which he con­cludes two pon­der­ous­ly long tweets that no one actu­al­ly read in full with:

    Last­ly, if X was not inde­pen­dent­ly con­trolled and gov­erned by a free speech abso­lutist, Neri and I would not have had the abil­i­ty to respond in a rapid fash­ion in a pub­lic forum where free speech is allowed, encour­aged, and respect­ed. I would also not have had the abil­i­ty to reach mil­lions of peo­ple with what I believe are impor­tant mes­sages.

    And I would not have been able to be near­ly as effec­tive in my cam­paign to help save the high­er edu­ca­tion sys­tem in our coun­try, and I rep­re­sent just one of hun­dreds of mil­lions of grate­ful users.

    So thank you @elonmusk !!! and thank you @lindayaX for hold­ing strong

    And, the two “free speech abso­lutists” are push­ing each oth­er to file a law­suit to silence free speech they dis­like:

    [see screen­shot of Bill Ack­man’s tweet thank­ing Elon Musk for Musk’s rec­om­men­da­tion that Ack­man file a law­suit]

    Even­tu­al­ly, Elon unbanned the accounts after a non­sense ped­dler asked him what was hap­pen­ing, and Elon promised “to inves­ti­gate.” He lat­er claimed that they “do sweeps for spam/scam accounts and some­times real accounts get caught up in them.”

    [see screen­shot of Elon Musk’s tweet try­ing to explain away as an inno­cent mis­take the ban­ning of accounts of var­i­ous reporters ]

    ...

    The sim­ple fact is, any plat­form has to do some lev­el of mod­er­a­tion, and as soon as you do that, you’re going to make mis­takes. I’d give Elon and ExTwit­ter the ben­e­fit of the doubt that this was just a mis­take if (a) he had done that to pre­vi­ous man­age­ment, though he did not and (b) if the accounts in ques­tion weren’t all found to have recent­ly crit­i­cized Elon and/or Bill Ack­man.

    Giv­en Elon’s own unwill­ing­ness to give the ben­e­fit of the doubt to oth­ers, why should we give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt here?

    Either way, Elon is free to do what­ev­er he wants on his plat­form. But absolute­ly no one should be under the illu­sion that what he’s doing has any­thing even remote­ly relat­ed to “defend­ing free speech.” He is mak­ing deci­sions based on his own per­son­al whims and foibles, which includes an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly warped sense of free speech that per­mits suing crit­ics.

    ————

    “‘Free Speech Abso­lutist’ Elon Musk Tem­porar­i­ly Bans Jour­nal­ists, As ‘Free Speech Abso­lutist’ Bill Ack­man Threat­ens SLAPP Suit Against Jour­nal­ists” by Mike Mas­nick; Tech Dirt; 01/10/2024

    “The sim­ple fact is, any plat­form has to do some lev­el of mod­er­a­tion, and as soon as you do that, you’re going to make mis­takes. I’d give Elon and ExTwit­ter the ben­e­fit of the doubt that this was just a mis­take if (a) he had done that to pre­vi­ous man­age­ment, though he did not and (b) if the accounts in ques­tion weren’t all found to have recent­ly crit­i­cized Elon and/or Bill Ack­man.

    Yeah, it would be a lot eas­i­er to assume X.com just hap­pened to acci­den­tal­ly catch all these jour­nal­ists in anti-spam sweeps if it was­n’t for the fact that the banned accounts has all recent­ly crit­i­cized Musk or Ack­man. The ben­e­fit of the doubt is a bit too much to rea­son­ably give in that sit­u­a­tion. Iron­i­cal­ly, note how Tul­si Gab­bard was start­ing a new “news show” for X.com that she claims was start­ed, in part, because “free­dom of speech is a fun­da­men­tal right in Amer­i­ca”:

    ...
    On Tues­day morn­ing, for­mer politi­cian Tul­si Gab­bard, who had to have the 1st Amend­ment clear­ly explained to her by a judge after she filed a ridicu­lous law­suit to restrict the free speech of oth­ers, announced that she had cut a deal with Elon Musk to bring a “news show” to ExTwit­ter. Hilar­i­ous­ly, she claimed that she did this because “free­dom of speech is a fun­da­men­tal right in Amer­i­ca” (again, a court had to teach her what that meant not that long ago).

    [see screen­shot of Tul­si Gab­bard’s tweet announc­ing the new part­ner­ship with X]

    At around the exact same time, “free speech abso­lutist” Elon Musk was busy ban­ning a bunch of reporters from ExTwit­ter for say­ing things that upset him and his pal Bill Ack­man.

    The social media plat­form gave no expla­na­tion for the sud­den purge, say­ing only that the accounts “vio­late the X rules.” The X rules pro­hib­it vio­lent or hate­ful speech, child exploita­tion, pri­vate infor­ma­tion shar­ing, and fake infor­ma­tion.

    But the accounts in ques­tion do not post that kind of con­tent. The reporters who were banned include Steven Mona­cel­li, a jour­nal­ist at the Texas Observ­er who cov­ers extrem­ism, and Ken Klip­pen­stein, who cov­ers nation­al secu­ri­ty for The Inter­cept. Last year, Klip­pen­stein pub­lished a piece on the errors with Tesla’s self-dri­ving fea­ture, and Mona­cel­li not­ed that X shad­ow-banned the Inter­cept author since then.

    Mint­Press News reporter Alan MacLeod, who recent­ly has exten­sive­ly cov­ered Israel’s approach to the war in Gaza, and left­ist pod­cast­er Rob Rousseau were also sus­pend­ed Tues­day.

    The accounts for @liamnissan, @zei_squirrel, and the TrueAnon pod­cast were sus­pend­ed, as well. The @liamnissan account posts most­ly comedic com­men­tary, includ­ing crit­i­cisms of Musk. The TrueAnon pod­cast pro­vides left-wing analy­sis of cur­rent polit­i­cal events and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

    The @zei_squirrel account is anoth­er left-lean­ing com­men­ta­tor who has been crit­i­cal of Musk in the past. In a post on their Sub­stack Tues­day, the @zei_squirrel writer not­ed that they had recent­ly begun to crit­i­cize Bill Ack­man, a hedge fund bil­lion­aire and friend of Musk’s who helped lead the cam­paign against for­mer Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Pres­i­dent Clau­dine Gay. Ackman’s wife was recent­ly accused of pla­gia­rism, the same charge that brought down Gay.

    ...

    So Bill Ack­man and Elon Musk appear to be form­ing some sort of hurt bil­lion­aire media-bul­ly­ing alliance tar­get­ing Busi­ness Insid­er, which is iron­i­cal­ly run by Math­ias Doepfn­er who appears to be very will­ing to play ball with this bul­ly­ing cam­paign.

    It’s going to be grim­ly inter­est­ing to see how this plays out. It’s not hard to imag­ine that we con­tin­ue to see a num­ber of crit­i­cal reports about Ack­man and Musk, although per­haps not as many com­ing from Axel Springer-owned out­lets. At the same time, it’s not just Ack­man and Musk send­ing a mes­sage here. Doepfn­er is send­ing a mes­sage too, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly just to reporters work­ing for Axel Springer-owned out­lets. Report­ing on pow­er­ful peo­ple will pose a risk to your career. That’s the mes­sage Doepfn­er ulti­mate­ly sent to the indus­try. And that’s why it’s also not hard to imag­ine that we’re see a lot few­er crit­i­cal sto­ries about Ack­man and maybe even Musk. Ack­man’s intim­i­da­tion ploy may not have entire­ly worked but, thanks to Math­ias Doepfn­er’s curi­ous pol­i­tics, it did­n’t real­ly fail yet either.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 11, 2024, 6:10 pm

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