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 Front page, 17 August 1961 | |
| Type | Dailytabloid(except Sundays andpublic holidays) |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet ("nordisch" size: 376 x 528 mm) |
| Owner | Axel Springer SE |
| Editor-in-chief | Marion Horn[1] |
| Editor | Robert Schneider |
| Founded | 24 June 1952; 73 years ago (1952-06-24) |
| Political alignment | Conservatism[2] Populism[3] |
| Language | German |
| Headquarters | Berlin |
| Circulation | 1,150,181 (Print, 2021) 458,952 (Digital, 2020) |
| Website | www |
Bild (German:[bɪlt]ⓘ,lit. 'Picture') orBild-Zeitung (German:[ˈbɪltˌtsaɪtʊŋ]ⓘ,lit. 'Picture Newspaper') is a Germantabloid newspaper published byAxel Springer SE. The paper is published from Monday to Saturday; on Sundays, its sister paperBild am Sonntag (lit. 'Bild on Sunday') is published instead, which has a different style and its own editors.Bild is tabloid in style butbroadsheet in size. It is thebest-selling European newspaper and has the sixteenth-largest circulation worldwide.[4]Bild has been described as "notorious for its mix of gossip, inflammatory language, and sensationalism" and as having a huge influence on German politicians.[5]
Its nearest English-language stylistic and journalistic equivalent is often considered to be the British national newspaperThe Sun, the second-highest-selling European tabloid newspaper.[6][7][8]
Like the rest of the Axel Springer properties,Bild follows an editorial line in favor ofliberal democracy,Israel,NATO andcapitalism.[9]
Bild was founded byAxel Springer (1912–1985) in 1952. It mostly consisted of pictures (hence the nameBild,German for picture).Bild soon became the best-selling tabloid, by a wide margin, not only in Germany, but in all of Europe, though essentially to German readers. Through most of its history,Bild was based in Hamburg. The paper moved its headquarters to Berlin in March 2008, stating that it was an essential base of operations for a national newspaper.[10] It is printed nationwide with 32 localized editions. Special editions are printed in some favoured German holiday destinations abroad such as Spain, Italy, Turkey and Greece.[citation needed]
Bild sold more than five million copies every day in the 1980s. In 1993 the paper had a circulation of slightly more than four million copies, making it the most read newspaper in the country.[11] In the period of 1995–96 its circulation was 4,300,000 copies.[12] In 2001Bild was the most read newspaper inEurope, and also in Germany, with a circulation of 4,396,000 copies.[13]
Although it is still Germany's biggest paper, the circulation ofBild, along with many other papers, has been on the decline in recent years. By the end of 2005, the figure dropped to 3.8 million copies.[14] Its daily circulation in 2010 was 3,548,000, making the paper the fifth in the list of the world's biggest selling newspapers.[15]
Bild is published intabloid format.[13] In the paper's beginnings, Springer was influenced by the model of the British tabloidDaily Mirror;[6] although Bild's paper size is larger, this is reflected in its mix of celebrity gossip, crime stories and political analysis. However, its articles are often considerably shorter compared to those in British tabloids, and the whole paper is thinner as well.[citation needed]
In June 2012, Bild celebrated its 60th anniversary by giving away free newspapers to almost all of Germany's 41 million households. Bild saidGuinness World Records in Germany has certified the print run as "the largest circulation for the free special edition of a newspaper".[16] In 2018 on average 2.2 million copies of the paper were printed across Germany[17] and 416,567 readers took advantage of the paid digital offer Bild plus. In terms of subscribers, it is the largest in Europe and the fifth largest worldwide.[18]
In 2019 Bild started a weekly politic newspaper, namedBild Politik, which ceased publications after a few months.[19] In 2024 it formalized an alliance with pro-Likud Israeli newspaperIsrael Hayom.[20]
From the outset, the editorial drift was conservative and nationalist.[21] TheGDR was referred to as theSoviet Occupation Zone (German:Sowjetische Besatzungszone orSBZ). The usage continued well into the 1980s, whenBild began to use the GDR's official name cautiously, putting it in quotation marks.Bild (along with fellow Springer tabloidB.Z.) heavily influenced public opinion against theWest German student movement andleft-wing terrorism in the years following 1966, and was blamed by some for the climate that contributed to the assassination attempt on activistRudi Dutschke in 1968—a popular catchphrase in left-wing circles sympathetic to student radicalism was "Bild hat mitgeschossen!" ("Bild shot at him too!").[22]
In 1977 investigative journalistGünter Wallraff worked for four months as an editor for theBild tabloid inHanover,[21] giving himself thepseudonym of "Hans Esser". In his booksDer Aufmacher ("Lead Story") andZeugen der Anklage ("Witnesses for the Prosecution") he portrays his experiences on the editorial staff of the paper and the journalism which he encountered there. The staff commonly displayed contempt for humanity, a lack of respect for the privacy of ordinary people and widespread conduct of unethical research and editing techniques. Wallraff's investigations were also the basis for the 1990 filmThe Man Inside.[citation needed]
After the fall of theBerlin Wall and the end of theCold War in Europe,Bild focused on celebrity stories and became less political.[21] Despite its general support for Germany's conservative parties and especially former chancellorHelmut Kohl, its rhetoric, still populist in tone, is less fierce than it was thirty years ago.[21] Its traditionally less conservative Sunday paperBild am Sonntag even supportedGerhard Schröder, aSocial Democrat, in his bid for chancellor in 1998.[citation needed]
In 2004,Bild started to cooperate with fast-food giant McDonald's to sell the tabloid at its 1,000 fast-food restaurants in Germany. The cooperation still goes on, often enough by advertising the restaurant chain in "news" articles. Photos of young, topless women appeared onBild's page onebelow the fold asSeite-eins-Mädchen or "Page One Girls". On 9 March 2012Bild announced the elimination of the "Page One Girls", instead moving its suggestive photos to its inside pages.[23]
In 2004Bild was publicly reprimanded twelve times by theDeutscher Presserat [de] (German Press Council).[6] This amounts for a third of the reprimands this self-regulation council of the German press declared that year. Up until 2012, it had received more reprimands than any other newspaper from this watchdog body.[5]
After Julian Reichelt became editor in 2018,Bild took a generally anti-Angela Merkel line, and strengthened its anti-Putin, pro-NATO, pro-Israel position.[21]
The left-leaningSpiegel magazine often accusesBild of pushing Germany further right and questionsBild's moral standards and journalistic quality.[24]
Itsmotto, prominently displayed below the logo, isunabhängig, überparteilich ("independent, nonpartisan"). Another slogan used prominently in advertising isBild dir deine Meinung!, which translates as "Form your own opinion!" (by readingBild), a pun based on the fact that, inGerman,Bild is ahomophone of the imperative form of theverbbilden (English:to form, to build, to educate) and the nounBild (English:picture, image).[31][32]
Bild is printed inAhrensburg, Hanover, Berlin, Leipzig,Essen,Neu-Isenburg,Esslingen, Munich, andSyke. Outside of Germany it is also printed in Madrid,Palma de Mallorca,Las Palmas, Milan, Athens, and inAntalya. The foreign locations cater mostly for German tourists and expatriates.[citation needed]
Der Spiegel wrote in 2006 that Bild "flies just under the nonsense threshold of American and British tabloids ... For the German desperate, it is a daily dose of high-resolution soft porn".[36]
It is arguedBild's thirst for sensationalism results in the terrorizing of prominent celebrities and stories are frequently based on the most dubious evidence. The journalistic standards ofBild are the subject of frequent criticism.[citation needed]
BILDblog [de] is a popular Germanblog that when founded was dedicated solely to documenting errors and fabrications inBild articles.[21] In 2005 BILDblog received theGrimme Online Award for its work. Since 2009 BILDblog has also reported on errors and fabrications in other newspapers from Germany and elsewhere.[citation needed]
Heinrich Böll's 1974 novelThe Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, and the 1975movie based on it, used a fictional stand-in forBild to make a point about its allegedly unethical journalistic practices. Böll's essay in the edition of 10 January 1972 ofDer Spiegel (titled "Will Ulrike Gnade oder freies Geleit? [de])[37] was sharply critical of Bild's sensationalist coverage of theBaader-Meinhof Gang. In the essay, Böll stated that whatBild does "isn'tcryptofascist anymore, not fascistoid, but naked fascism. Agitation, lies, dirt."[37]
Judith Holofernes, lead singer of German bandWir sind Helden, wrote a scathing open letter to Bild's advertising agency after they asked her to star in a campaign. "Bild is not a harmless guilty pleasure", she wrote, but a "dangerous political instrument—not only a high-magnification telescope into the abyss but an evil creature".[24]
WriterMax Goldt has described the paper as"an organ of infamy" and posited that"one has to be as impolite to its editors as is legally possible; they are bad people who do wrong".[38]
For 28 years from 1984 to 2012,Bild hadtopless women featuring on its first page; in total, the paper published more than 5,000 topless pictures.[39]
In 2014 Sophia Becker and Kristina Lunz launched a campaign,StopBild Sexism, to end the use of sexualized images of women in Bild. The campaign was inspired by theNo More Page 3 campaign to getThe Sun in the United Kingdom to stop publishing images of half-naked women onpage 3.[40][41][42] Lunz argues thatBild's frequent use of images of unclothed women makes its reporting ofsexual assault andharassment "sexist andvoyeuristic."[43] Becker says thatBild contributes to the normalisation of sexism in German society.[44] The petition had over 35,000 signatures in January 2015,[40] andSpringer, the newspaper's publisher, responded by issuing a statement of values. These include the importance of mutual respect and maintaining respectful interactions.[45]Bild stopped publishing "topless productions of our own with women" in March 2018, three years afterThe Sun, while continuing to publish photos of provocatively-posed models dressed in underwear alone.[46]
In August 2021, Axel Springer SE launchedBild television channel, a free-to-air 24-hour TV program under Germany's largest tabloid brand, "Bild". However, TV ratings fell short of expectations, and the media company discontinued the linear "Bild" TV program at the end of 2023.[47]
TheBerlin offices have a 19-storeypaternoster lift, whose continued operation was vigorously defended editorially by the newspaper.[49][50]
... Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), centre-right, liberal conservative • Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), centre-left, progressive liberalism • Bildzeitung, centre-right, conservative populist tabloid • Frankfurter Rundschau (FR), ...
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