Editing Axel Springer (section)

=== 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" />