Editing Axel Springer (section)

== Criticism and confrontation ==
=== The SDS Anti-Springer campaign ===
The Spiegel affair ignited youth protest and brought the ''Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund'' (SDS), the German Socialist Student Union, onto the streets. Swift to denounce those who questioned the equity and social costs of the West German ''[[Wirtschaftswunder]]'' ("economic miracle"), Springer characterised the "extra-parliamentary opposition" as subversive.<ref name="Sedlmaier">{{cite book |last1=Sedlmaier |first1=Alexander |title=Consumption and Violence: Radical Protest in Cold-War West Germany |date=2014 |publisher=University of Michigan Press |location=Ann Arbor |pages=168–204 |jstor=j.ctv3znzm0.8 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv3znzm0.8 |access-date=13 February 2021 |archive-date=27 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200727183319/https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv3znzm0.8 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In June 1967 an open letter from a large group of writers (among them [[Ingeborg Drewitz]], [[Hans Magnus Enzensberger]] and [[Günter Grass]]), accused the Springer Press of "incitement" in a police riot in West Berlin that saw the death of student protester [[Benno Ohnesorg]].<ref>"Zum Tod des Studenten Benno Ohnesorg" in ''Vaterland, Muttersprache: Deutsche Schriftsteller und ihr Staat von 1945 bis heute'', eds. Klaus Wagenbach, Winfried Stephan and Michael Krüger. Klaus Wagenbach Berlin, 1980, {{ISBN|380310100X}}. p. 247</ref> Rallied by [[Ulrike Meinhof]]'s journal ''konkret'', students had been protesting a visit by the [[Mohammad Reza Pahlavi|Shah of Iran]]. Bild's response (3 June 1967) to the death was to declare that where "Students threaten: We shoot back" and "This is where fun and compromise and democratic tolerance end. We have to take a stand against [[Sturmabteilung|SA]] methods".<ref>{{Cite web|title=- Presse-Cäsar mit "Bild"-Zeitung|url=https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/presse-caesar-mit-bild-zeitung.870.de.html?dram:article_id=131525|access-date=4 March 2021|website=Deutschlandfunk Kultur|language=de-DE}}</ref><ref>"Studenten drohen: Wir schießen zurück", "Hier hören der Spaß und der Kompromiss und die demokratische Toleranz auf. Wir haben etwas gegen SA-Methoden." Kai Herrmann: [http://www.zeit.de/1967/23/die-polizeischlacht-von-berlin ''Die Polizeischlacht von Berlin''.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211211203438/https://www.zeit.de/1967/23/die-polizeischlacht-von-berlin |date=11 December 2021 }} In: ''[[Die Zeit]]'', Nr. 23/1967</ref> Protesters broke windows at Springer offices and tried to disrupt printing and delivery, but the trade unions kept their distance from the anti-Springer campaign, and the SDS, increasingly focussed on the [[Vietnam War|War in Vietnam]], conceded that the protests had failed to "mobilise the masses". After a month it called a halt.<ref name="Sedlmaier" />

When on 11 April 1968, the SDS leader [[Rudi Dutschke]] (who had called for the expropriation of Springer's press empire) was shot on the street in West Berlin by the young right-wing extremist [[Josef Bachmann]], the cry again was that ''Bild'' was complicit ("Bild schoss mit!"). Serious unrest followed . Demonstrators tried to storm the Springer house in Berlin and set fire to ''Bild'' delivery vans. The Hamburg print shop was besieged to prevent the paper leaving the presses, and in Munich a demonstrator and a policeman were killed after students ransacked the ''Bild'' editorial offices. There were over a thousand arrests.<ref name="Sedlmaier" /> "A tendentious headline in ''Bild''", the protesters claimed, "is more violence than a stone against the head of a policeman".<ref>"'Gefáhr für uns alle', Studenten gegen Springer", ''Der Spiegel'', 6 May 1968, p. 42</ref>

[[Helmut Schmidt]], then parliamentary leader of the Social Democrats, sought to intervene with Springer. Schmidt conceded that the publisher's success was related to new journalistic methods and formats that catered to public tastes, but charged Springer with using that position of preeminence to mix "news and suggestive commentary". He might have "fewer problems" if he restructured his publishing house on the model of private foundations or public media institutions. In the event, when finally Springer consented to meet with Schmidt in August 1968, their discussion was of the Czechoslovak crisis (Schmidt assuring Springer that it was "impossible" that the Soviets would repeat the events of [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956|Budapest 1956]] and crush the [[Prague Spring]] with tanks).<ref>{{Cite web|date=2019|title=Tripartite summit after Dutschke assassination attempt|url=https://www.axelspringer.com/en/inside/tripartite-summit-after-dutschke-assassination-attempt|url-status=live|access-date=13 December 2021|website=www.axelspringer.com|language=en-GB|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200811120113/https://www.axelspringer.com/en/inside/tripartite-summit-after-dutschke-assassination-attempt |archive-date=11 August 2020 }}</ref>

On 19 May 1972, the [[Red Army Faction]] (the "Baader Meinhof Gang") bombed Springer's Hamburg offices, injuring 17 employees, two of them seriously.<ref>{{cite web |title=Red Army Faction: A Chronology of Terror |url=https://www.dw.com/en/red-army-faction-a-chronology-of-terror/a-2763946#:~:text=In%20its%2028%20years%20of,of%20the%20group's%20terrorist%20activities. |website=DW |publisher=Deutsche Welle |access-date=9 February 2021 |archive-date=26 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210126211438/https://www.dw.com/en/red-army-faction-a-chronology-of-terror/a-2763946#:~:text=In%20its%2028%20years%20of,of%20the%20group's%20terrorist%20activities. |url-status=live }}</ref> Springer critics regretted the escalation, but accepted the thesis of [[The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum|''The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, or: How violence develops and where it can lead'']], [[Heinrich Böll]]'s 1974 novel in which violence is framed and driven by a demagogic and unscrupulous tabloid press. "No one", Haffner argued in liberal weekly ''Stern'', "has planted the seeds of violence more keenly than Springer journalism".<ref>Sebastian Haffner, "Blutiges Spiel", ''Stern'', 4 June 1972.</ref><ref name="Sedlmaier" />

=== Investigations ===
Springer declared that no government minister need tell him "what the people think". Critics, however, focussed less on his supposedly canny sense for the public, than on his press capacity to shape opinion. It was said that Federal ministers began each day by "combing ''Die Welt'' for signs of whether Springer was smiling of frowning on them."<ref name="Goshko" /> If only in its headline, the front page of ''Bild'' was also seen as "agenda setting".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Koss|first=Jennifer|title=Bildzeitung und Agenda-Setting: Die Titelseite der BILD als Beispiel für mediale Thematisierungsmacht|publisher=GRIN Verlag|year=2010|isbn=978-3-640-59818-2}}</ref>

In 1968, a government commission concluded that the degree of control Springer had achieved over the publishing industry in West Germany (40% of newspapers and about 20% of magazines) threatened the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press.<ref>[http://www.zeit.de/1968/22/die-pressefreiheit-ist-bedroht ''"Die Pressefreiheit ist bedroht"''.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191130200732/https://www.zeit.de/1968/22/die-pressefreiheit-ist-bedroht |date=30 November 2019 }} In: ''[[Die Zeit]]'', Nr. 22/1968, 31 May 1968, access date 17 February 2021</ref> But official steps towards decartelisation were successfully pre-empted by Springer's sale of a half dozen of his lesser titles.<ref>{{citation
  |title=Spiegel-Interview mit dem Vorsitzenden der Bonner Presse-Kommission Dr. Eberhard Günther
  |url=http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-45997574.html
  |author=
  |work=[[Der Spiegel]]
  |year=1968
  |volume=
  |issue=27
  |series=17 February
  |pages=
  |quote=
  |access-date=17 February 2021
  |archive-date=12 April 2016
  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160412065136/http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-45997574.html
  |url-status=live
  }}</ref> A critical test of his ability to manage and deflect concern over media concentration might have come only with the introduction of commercial television, and that was delayed in West Germany until 1984, the year before he died.<ref name="Sedlmaier" /> ([[Willy Brandt|Willi Brandt]] recalls that his "friendly relations" with Axel Springer first suffered in the early 1960s when, as governing mayor of West Berlin, he had declined Springer's request to help him open the Federal Republic to commercial television by licensing a local broadcaster).<ref name="Brandt">{{cite book |last1=Brandt |first1=Willi |title=My Life in Politics |date=1992 |publisher=Viking |location=London |isbn=0-670-84435-7 |page=266}}</ref>

A more serious embarrassment for Springer were the investigations of journalist [[Günter Wallraff]]. In 1977, his employment, undercover, as an editor for ''Bild'' led to exposés, (''Der Aufmacher'' – a pun meaning both "Lead Story" and "the one who opens" – and ''Zeugen der Anklage'', "Witnesses for the Prosecution") of the kinds of journalistic malpractices and unethical research methods Böll had depicted in his novel (directed in 1975 as a film by [[Volker Schlöndorff]] and [[Margarethe von Trotta]]). Wallraff (denounced by Springer as a "liar", a "psychopath" and an "underground communist") noted that "Bild regularly broke into the private, even intimate sphere of the people it was reporting about", and he claimed to have seen suicide notes written by people who had their lives publicly scandalised by the paper.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Welle (www.dw.com)|first=Deutsche|title=60 years old, 'Bild' newspaper divisive as ever {{!}} DW {{!}} 22 June 2012|url=https://www.dw.com/en/60-years-old-bild-newspaper-divisive-as-ever/a-16044303|access-date=24 February 2021|website=DW.COM|language=en-GB|archive-date=14 June 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200614035250/https://www.dw.com/en/60-years-old-bild-newspaper-divisive-as-ever/a-16044303|url-status=live}}</ref>

The German Press Council issued ''Bild'' six reprimands. After extended legal action brought by Springer, a Federal court in 1981 ruled in favour of Mr. Wallraff. It said his writings had focused on "an aberration in journalism, the discussion of which should be of great interest to the public."<ref name="Kerr2"/> Injunctions nonetheless prevented publication of some of the most damning material. Un-redacted copies of Wallraff original reporting were not published until 2012.<ref name="Sedlmaier" />