<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/13/axel-springer-ceo-mathias-dopfner-leaked-messages-reported>
"The German CEO of Europe’s largest media publisher tried to use his flagship
tabloid,
Bild, to influence the outcome of Germany’s last election and fed
the newspaper his personal views attacking climate change activism, Covid
measures and the former chancellor Angela Merkel, leaked messages suggest.
The internal chats, emails and text messages published by the German weekly
Die Zeit on Wednesday clash with the public presentation of Axel Springer
SE’s chief executive, Mathias Döpfner, who recently said he wanted to bring
“non-partisan” journalism to a too-polarised US media landscape through his
acquisition of the English-language title
Politico.
In one of the messages quoted verbatim in
Die Zeit, from 2017, Döpfner says:
“I am all for climate change,” seemingly arguing that human civilisation in
periods of warm climate was always “more successful” than during cold-climate
periods. “We shouldn’t fight climate change but adjust to it.”
The comments are part of a longer message in which Döpfner sums up his foreign
policy views as “Free west, fuck the intolerant Muslims and all the other
riff-raff.”
Döpfner, who holds a 22% share in the Berlin-based company Axel Springer and
sits on the board of directors of Netflix, repeatedly voiced his distrust of
the population of the formerly socialist states of eastern Germany. “The ossis
[east Germans] are either communists or fascists. They don’t do in-between.
Disgusting.”
In a message from October 2019, the top executive ponders writing an article on
the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in which he calls for
rescinding reunification and turning the former GDR into an “agrarian and
production zone with uniform wage payments”. “My mother always said it. The
ossis are never going to be democrats.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
