In Mathias Döpfner’s 2023 book Dealing with Dictators, the chief executive of the German media company Axel Springer SE proposed a fix for western democracy: states that respect the rule of law should stick together and prioritise trading with each other. Better that, he declared, than indulging the illusion that doing business will tame “self-styled strongman leaders”.
So it came as quite the surprise when last month Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, was given a prominent opinion article in Welt am Sonntag, less than four weeks before the riskiest elections of the rightwing populist’s career. “It caused a lot of strong irritation,” said a former editor at the Springer-owned broadsheet.
Long a powerful and polarising force in Germany’s postwar media landscape, Axel Springer is now aiming to become a major player in the transatlantic sphere. In 2021 it added the US-European outlet Politico to its large portfolio of German titles, and is buying the UK’s Daily Telegraph in a £575m all-cash deal.
Mergers and buyouts always end well.
Politico still does some decent journalism, as do WaPo and NYT. The thing is, you have to have a bullshit detector on hand as a reader, and we stopped teaching media literacy decades ago.
RT had some decent articles as well in between all that propaganda.
Why wait till they reach that stage instead of looking for better alternatives?
Because I was a news editor for decades and can separate good reporting from an overall shitty outlet.
Well, 99% of humanity wasn’t and as you said media literacy is out of the window.
So when you post a Politico article you give average Joe the impression that this is a reputable news outlet, when in fact you have to be on your guard because the owner is a slimy bastard.
Why do you think I offered to oversee a news community? I get that I have specialised training, but I choose to use it for good.