Don't mess with Bild!

Each day, millions of Germans wake up and read the Bild newspaper over breakfast or on their way to work. For these people, the colorful tabloid published by the Springer publishing house is an accessible and entertaining source of information about politics, celebrities and sport.

For millions of other Germans, however, the mass-circulation daily is much more than a newspaper. Some see it as a low-brow reactionary nutcracker - or even an instrument of democratic control.

German journalist Günther Wallraff denounced the newspaper as the "mouthpiece of evil" in the late 1970s. Left-leaning poet and intellectual Hans-Magnus Enzensberger chose to be more ironic when he described the publication as a "holistic artwork."

As former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder once said:"All I need to govern is Bild, BamS (the Sunday edition of Bild) and the idiot box."

Design matters

With a daily circulation of almost four million copies, Bild has the widest reach of any German print publication.

"The magical thing about Bild is that it provides a high degree of design-oriented reflection at a level that readers understand with or without a university degree," said Berlin-based media expert Norbert Bolz.

"Many Springer journalists consider themselves artists who know how to approach their work with solve complex design problems," he added.

This creativity is best observed in front page headlines, which are typically short, snappy, and printed in very large font sizes.

News that Angela Merkel would replace Gerhard Schröder as chancellor in 2005, for example, was summarized with the headline "Miss Germany".

Similarly, the election of German Josef Ratzinger as Pope in the same year was boiled down to "Wir sind Papst" (literally "We are pope" – a German play on words that likens the result to a football championship victory).

The personal touch

Bild reports are generally picture-laden and personal, with a heavy focus on public figures, publicity-hungry celebrities and (stylized) victim types.

Bolz said the paper has perfected the key tabloid challenge of communicating "from person to person, without resorting to abstract terms or concepts to explain the world – that is, without all the hallmarks of sophisticated communication."

Critics like investigative journalist Günther Wallraff said the paper's way of dealing with people is problematic.

In 1977 Wallraff went undercover to report for Bild under the assumed name "Hans Esser" for four months. He then published three books describing the questionable editorial practices he encountered at the paper, which he said often displayed contempt for humanity.

"You really have to worry about all the people who can't pick up the phone, people who don't have access to lawyers that Bild respects," Wallraff told Deutsche Welle in an interview about Bild's role in the current scandal surrounding German President Christian Wulff.

"I have in my possession suicide notes left behind by people who took their own lives after libelous stories went to print in the 1970s."

'Rambo-journalism'

In the politically charged 1960s and 1970s, Bild was the sworn enemy of the student protest movement, which accused the Springer publishing group of actively supporting the "establishment."

Reporters who worked for Springer papers including Die Welt, the Berliner Zeitung and the Hamburger Abendblatt were often described as "neo-fascists."

"Back then Bild journalists were like Rambo. They'd descend on households like an aggressive door-to-door sales force," Wallraff said.

"If the parents of a child murdered by a sex offender didn't want to give them a photo of their son or daughter, they would threaten to go to the city morgue to get their own images."

"Today there are journalists at Bild who oppose such tactics," he added. "Unfortunately they're not in positions where they can change things."

Setting the agenda

Journalists from other newspapers often complain about Bild's cozy ties with Germany's political elite. Certain politicians, they charge, sometimes provide the newspaper with exclusive photographs and interviews in exchange for favorable coverage.

"Bild doesn't just cover politics. Bild shapes politics," Wallraff told Deutsche Welle.

"Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it doesn't. Look at the rise and fall of Guttenberg," he said, referring to former German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a young conservative who enjoyed years of positive coverage in the newspaper - even after he lost his post in a plagiarism scandal.

While Bild was accused of favoring only conservative politicians in the 1970s, media expert Norbert Bolz says tabloid values now take priority over party lines.

"Bild is just as happy – if not happier - writing about someone like (Social Democrat) Gerhard Schröder as it is reporting on some gray conservative president," Bolz said.

"Tabloid means sensation, scandal, and celebrities. Once a politician gains celebrity status, Bild doesn't care which party they're from."

Scandal-hungry

While Bild is happy to court celebrities, it is not afraid of turning on them.

Critics described the newspaper's coverage of rape allegations against prominent weatherman Jörg Kachelmann, for example, as a "trial by media."

In contrast, Heribert Prantl, political editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, told Deutsche Welle he didn't think Bild had crossed any lines in its handling of the scandal surrounding German President Christian Wulff and his attempt to suppress a report about his finances with a threatening phone call.

"Obviously journalists shouldn't be permitted to break into the presidential villa and take photos – that would go beyond the public interest. But in this case, asking questions about his private property and conducting research into irregularities is the core task of the media."

Holding up a mirror

Günther Wallraff said that if the media reflects the societies we live in, Bild is an oversized, distorted "concave mirror of perversion" in Germany.

But the German tabloid scene is still quite tame compared with equivalent papers in other countries.

In France, the death of Princess Diana highlighted the desperate tactics used by celebrity-stalking paparazzi.

Switzerland's SonntagsBlick fired its last chief editor (a German) for publishing manipulated nude photos of an ambassador's lover.

More recently, Britain's best-selling Sunday tabloid, the News of the World, was closed down after its reporters were found to have bugged and hacked the phones of prominent personalities and the families of terror victims.

Author: Johanna Schmeller / sje
Editor: Nicole Goebel