Mathias Döpfner, the chief executive of Axel Springer, the Berlin-based publishing giant that owns Politico and Business Insider, is facing criticism for private comments he made insulting East Germans and urging an editor of one of his newspapers to report favorably on a political party in the 2021 German election.
The text messages, which were published by the German weekly Die Zeit, are the latest revelations to rock the company since accusations of workplace misconduct against a prominent editor of its leading German publication, Bild, emerged in 2021.
The texts gave a glimpse of Mr. Döpfner’s thoughts on a variety of topics, including his opinion of former Chancellor Angela Merkel and his position on climate change. Die Zeit did not reveal how it had obtained the private messages.
But the remarks urging the editor of Bild to provide favorable coverage to a political party touched a nerve in journalistic circles especially because Mr. Döpfner has described himself as a supporter of independent news media.
Marion Horn, who was acting editor in chief at Bild until Monday, insisted over the weekend in a commentary that “I don’t let anyone tell me what Bild has to write.” She defended the integrity and independence of her reporters, and she called on Mr. Döpfner to apologize.
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He did so the next day in a commentary published in Bild in which he also lamented that he had intended his messages to stay private. “I apologize for offending, unsettling or hurting many with my words,” he wrote.
Mr. Döpfner owns a 21.9 percent stake in the company, but he also holds the voting rights of Frieda Springer, who is the widow of the company’s founder, Axel Springer, and holds 22.5 percent. She tapped Mr. Döpfner to become chief executive in 2002 after surviving challenges to her leadership by others in the Springer family.
Under Mr. Döpfner, Axel Springer has expanded from a traditional German publisher to an international digital media company. In 2015, the company bought Business Insider (now called Insider) for $442 million. It purchased Politico in 2021 for more than $1 billion, with the aim of becoming what Mr. Döpfner described as “the leading digital publisher in the democratic world.”
The New York private equity company KKR owns a 35.6 percent stake it bought in 2019 to take the company private, allowing Axel Springer to expand more rapidly outside Germany and focus its energy on pushing into digital media. Axel Springer announced last month that it would begin phasing out its printed newspapers in the next years. In addition to Bild, a splashy tabloid that is Germany’s biggest-circulation newspaper, it also owns Die Welt, a centrist broadsheet.
KKR declined to comment on whether the latest revelations had damaged its trust in Mr. Döpfner. Philipp Freise, who helps lead the firm’s European private equity business and is also a member of Axel Springer’s supervisory board, praised Mr. Döpfner last week as “a great visionary” in an interview on the “OMR” podcast.
Before he became chief executive, Mr. Döpfner worked as a journalist for four decades. In his column on Sunday, he pointed to the body of his published work, insisting that it better reflected his thoughts than “bits of texts and conversations” that had been “ripped out of context.”
Mr. Döpfner’s remarks, in which he said all East Germans were “either Communists or fascists,” led some people, including the government’s point person for the region, to call for his resignation. He had made similar remarks in another message seen by The New York Times in 2021.
Die Zeit also cited two remarks in which Mr. Döpfner urged an editor at Bild to provide coverage favorable to the Free Democrats party in the days before the 2021 federal election. Each instance was followed by a favorable article about the party. The party is now a member of the three-party coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Other media outlets pointed to Axel Springer’s code of conduct, which states that “management leaves editorial decisions completely to the editorial staff and does not interfere in these decisions.”
Last year, The Financial Times reported that Mr. Döpfner had failed to disclose that he was the owner of a building in Berlin rented by Adidas, all the while Bild had published more than 20 articles chiding the sportswear maker for its decision to stop paying rent during the first pandemic lockdown. Other retailers with similar policies received far less coverage by the paper.
Mr. Döpfner defended his actions, saying that his editors acted independently of his point of view.
“In the end, the editors in chief always decide — often in the sharpest contrast to my personal opinion — what they publish, and they are responsible for it,” Mr. Döpfner said.
