The new buyer has a long and well-documented tendency to blur the line between journalism and right-wing politics.
The three-year, topsy-turvy sale of the Telegraph saga that LLF has meticulously covered, may finally be coming to an end, though I feel sure I’ve written that before.
Last week it was announced that Axel Springer SE, the German media giant, is buying the Telegraph titles.
For a time, it looked as if the publications would end up in the hands of Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere’s Daily Mail and General Trust, further consolidating Britain’s media landscape under a handful of powerful right-right owners. But Axel Springer’s £575 million cash offer knocked that bid off the perch at the last moment.
The news prompted a wave of wry celebration among liberals and pro-Europeans. Given the Telegraph’s firmly Brexiteer credentials, there was an obvious sense of irony in the idea that it might now be owned by a German publisher.
“The acquisition of the Telegraph by the German Axel Springer group – snatched from the dreadful, xenophobic Daily Mail – has to be the best news of the day,” wrote campaign group, Sheffield for Europe.
“The Telegraph was once a respected and respectable daily broadsheet newspaper, if on the right of politics but went steadily downhill in recent years becoming a pro Brexit propaganda sheet.
“We look forward to a return to respectability.”
But that optimism may be premature. To understand why, it’s worth asking a simple question: who exactly is Axel Springer?
A powerful global publisher
Axel Springer SE is a multinational media company headquartered in Berlin. It was founded in 1946 by the journalist and publisher Axel Springer.
Over the decades it grew into one of Europe’s largest publishing houses. By 2004 the company controlled around 23.6% percent of the German daily newspaper market. Today it has transformed itself into a digital-first media group and, in the United States, ranks among the top four digital publishers alongside USA Today, News Corp, and the New York Times.
Its ambitions in the American political media market became clear in 2021 when it purchased the Washington-based news outlet Politico for roughly $1 billion. As Foreign Policy observed at the time, “the media world gasped at the financial audacity,” noting that the purchase price was around five times the outlet’s annual revenue.
The company has not always escaped scrutiny. The New York Times examined allegations about the firm’s workplace culture and its retrograde approach to gender issues.
Yet, as Foreign Policy pointed out, another aspect of the company’s history has often attracted less attention: its long and well-documented tendency to blur the line between journalism and right-wing politics.
A strongly ideological tradition
Unlike Politico, which Foreign Policy describes as “studiously neutral in its political commitments,” the Axel Springer empire has historically been far more explicit about its political position.
One of its earliest and most influential titles, the German tabloid Bild, was famously described by German punk band Die Ärzte as “Angst, Hass, Titten und der Wetterbericht”, “fear, hatred, tits and the weather report.”
The paper and its online edition are frequently reprimanded by the German Press Council for breaches of the country’s press code, particularly relating to privacy and journalistic ethics.
In 2020, the Guardian described Bild as editorially “pro-US, pro-NATO, pro-Israel, pro-austerity, pro-capital, anti-Russia and anti-China.” Critics argue that its coverage resembles a blend of American-style culture-war politics and tabloid sensationalism.
As Foreign Policy put it, the outlet has left “a long trail of vindictive journalism in Germany,” with a tone closer to a hybrid of the National Enquirer and Fox News than to the more restrained political reporting associated with Politico.
Unsurprisingly, surveys show that German readers trust Bild significantly less than other national news sources.
The parallels with the Telegraph may not be entirely comforting to those hoping for a dramatic editorial reset.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, Bild pursued its own campaign against lockdown measures, vaccination programmes and mask mandates, echoing debates that raged within the pages of the Telegraph, which frequently provided a platform for lockdown sceptics.
More continuity than change?
For that reason, some media observers suspect the Telegraph’s editorial direction may not change as much as its critics hope.
As Journalist Mic Wright, author of the Little Broken Boy Substack newsletter, put it
Those Telegraph readers who fear that a German owner will somehow make the paper “go woke,” he suggested, need not worry.
His prediction is that Axel Springer will simply keep the title on much the same course, backing right-wing populist politics, taking a hard line on immigration and welfare, and enthusiastically supporting US and Israeli foreign policy positions.
If that proves true, the irony of a German company owning Britain’s most prominent Brexiteer newspaper may be real. But the editorial transformation some of its critics are hoping for may be far less so.
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