From the BZ editorial team
BZ is part of the BILD Group and is published by Axel Springer. On Thursday, “Die Zeit” published private messages from our CEO Dr. Mathias Döpfner, which were also hotly debated in our editorial team. A comment from Marion Horn, Chair of the BILD editors-in-chief.
“I’m worried, what’s going on where you work?” – That’s what my mother wrote to me yesterday. Many of my colleagues have received such and similar messages.
The publication of private messages from our CEO unsettles the BILD team, our families, friends and our readers. Many are angry because he B. disrespectfully expressed about East Germans. I don’t like that either.
I’ve been the chair of the BILD editors-in-chief for a month, before that I was editor-in-chief of BamS for a long time. In the more than 20 years at Axel Springer, many people have tried to whisper to me what BILD or BamS should write about. Politicians, managers, activists, celebrities. The question is how a BILD boss deals with it.
I don’t let anyone tell me what BILD has to write. I don’t know of any journalists in this House who do that either.
As a journalist at Axel Springer, I always experience absolute journalistic freedom from day one. BILD thrives on hard debate.
We discuss the issues that move Germany. We fight about our stories and headlines and comments. This is the freedom of expression that we live and that is so important for our democracy.
And of course we also have controversial discussions in the editorial office about the SMS snippets that are now being published with great relish by competitors. What annoys me the most: the tenor of some reports discredits the work of the excellent journalists at BILD. That’s bad.
Everyone knows what BILD stands for. We live our values and guiding principles. Our first principle is standing up for freedom. This also means that BILD is free to report as BILD sees fit. And Mathias Döpfner defends this freedom every day, even against resistance from politics, business and culture.
Yes, Mathias Döpfner texted sentences that are absolutely wrong as they stand. But that’s not what we think at BILD or in this publishing house. Actually, an apology is due, boss!