Paper Keeps It Lively : Germany’s Bild Feared, Attacked

Henry A. Kissinger, among others, was suprised to learn that a racy Hamburg daily called Bild was the largest-selling newspaper in the Western world.

“When Kissinger asked me what our circulation was,” Bild’s political editor, Hans-Erich Bilges, recalled recently in his office, “I told him we had 5 million circulation and 10 million readers.

“I added that in Europe only Pravda, in the Soviet Union, outsold us. But they had 10 million circulation--and 5 million readers.”

Bilges’ figures are already out of date. Bild now has more than 5.3 million buyers and is estimated to have 12 million readers, about a fifth of the West German population.

Household Word

Bild--the word means “picture”--is little-known outside West Germany, but within the country, it is known to virtually everyone. Surveys have found that the name is recognized by almost all adult Germans, and ranks second only to Volkswagen in this sense.

Bild far outsells other West German dailies. The second-place Westdeutsche Allgemeine, of Essen, sells 670,000 copies. Of the nationally circulated pillars of journalism, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, of Munich, sells 340,000; the Frankfurter Allgemeine, 320,000, and Die Welt, of Bonn, 200,000.

Bild is a flashy, full-sized blend of red and black headlines, provocative pictures and articles that deal with sex, crime and gossip. But it mixes in political interviews, articles dealing with health and television shows, profiles of celebrities, and sports coverage that is generally considered to be the best in any German daily.

‘Everything Short’

“We try to keep everything short,” the paper’s top editor, Horst Fust, told a visitor as he laid out a recent edition. “We can’t afford to bore the reader. We look out for the reader’s interest. Our motto is: ‘Bild Fights For You.’ But we always try to remain in good humor.”

Bild has more than its share of critics. They say it is sensational, simplistic, a harmful influence on public opinion.

“It’s a terrible paper,” an editor in Bonn observed. “But one has to admire it. They know how to manipulate their readers and they are very professional.”

A British correspondent said, “Bild practices typographical terrorism.”

And an American correspondent offered, “It’s a kind of German daily version of the National Enquirer.”

But Bild’s editors point out that whatever the critics say, the readers seem to love the paper. Moreover, it is required reading for politicians of every stripe, and few of them pass up a chance to appear in Bild.

“Everyone from Franz Josef Strauss, on the right, to Willy Brandt, on the left, wants to get in the paper,” a German editor remarked. “When it comes to the business of counting up votes, Bild is very important.”

Because of the entree that Bild has with politicians and their staffers, it often comes up with exclusives. It obtained the contents of a recent letter from Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to Chancellor Helmut Kohl; it broke the story that the Kremlin would grant an exit visa to Yelena Bonner, wife of Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, and it has been out in front with disclosures in West Germany’s spy scandals.

But, according to its detractors, Bild can be far off the mark in its reporting, particularly when dealing with celebrities abroad.

“The problem for the reader,” a West German journalist said, “is that he never knows what is true and what is false in the paper.”

Founded by Axel Springer

Bild has been at the center of controversy from the time of its inception. It was founded in 1952, by press magnate Axel Springer, as a lively, readable daily designed for a mass audience--not unlike American and British tabloids, although it is full-size.

Springer, who died earlier this year, was a brilliant publisher of conservative views who not only devised the concept but set up a distribution program, including newsstands and tobacco shops, that made it easy to buy the paper.

As one commentator pointed out, “The distribution was so good that workers could get the paper outside their factories early in the morning with late news in it.”

Bild was an immediate hit. In the years since, printing plants have been set up in key West German cities. Today, it is printed at 10 locations, and there are 26 separate regional editions.

Springer held strong views: that East and West Germany should be reunited, that strong ties must be maintained with Israel, that a free-market economy must prevail, and that the conservatives--the Christian Democrats--are better suited for national government than the Social Democrats. People joining the editorial staff are still required to sign a contract subscribing to most of these views.

Springer was a natural target for critics, not only because of the strident nature of the paper but also because of his expanding empire. He also owned the Hamburger Abendblatt and Die Welt, and under his direction, a Sunday version of the paper, Bild am Sonntag, rapidly became the country’s largest weekend seller. In all, about 20% of the newspaper circulation in West Germany came to be controlled by Springer.

As a consequence, he drew considerable fire during the rioting of the late 1960s. Often there were demonstrations outside his headquarters here, and in Berlin, where he moved personally to show solidarity with the people of East Germany after the Communists built the Berlin Wall in 1961.

Yet his staff believed then and believes now that Bild’s political influence has been greatly overrated.

Bild’s editorials generally run to only a few paragraphs, and they do not necessarily back the conservative chancellor to the hilt. For example, a recent criticism of Chancellor Kohl was headlined: “The Black Giant is Shaking.”

As political editor Bilges pointed out, “Most of our readers vote Social Democratic, so how can our so-called right-wing views influence them? Besides, this paper is too complicated for any one man to put his political stamp on it. The regional editors have plenty of autonomy in terms of what goes in their editions.”

Other News Sources

Other Bild staffers argue that if the paper, say, became hostile to unions during a strike, many of its readers would cease to buy it.

Further, as the editors at Bild are fully aware, West Germans have plenty of other sources of news, including radio and television in addition to other newspapers.

The news day at Bild begins the night before, when the editors, after putting out one issue, begin to plan for the next day’s. At 11:30 a.m. the following day, chief editor Fust, 54, who likes to work in his shirtsleeves, has a news conference.

A second conference takes place at 3 p.m., to firm up layouts so that pages near the back of the issue can be transmitted electronically to regional plants. The paper goes to press at 8 p.m., but changes can be made up until about midnight to accommodate late-breaking news developments.

The result is a brisk and lively publication, with short words, headlines that go to the point and lots of pictures, sometimes beautifully reproduced in four colors. Bild is light years away from most other German newspapers, which are gray and often dull, characterized by tortuous, philosophical prose.

To help keep circulation above the 5 million mark, Bild is heavy on promotion. It has introduced a sort of lotto game on its front page; it emphasizes topical issues such as AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), and it pays considerable attention to popular figures like tennis star Boris Becker. For picture subjects, Bild prefers celebrities such as Princess Stephanie of Monaco rather than the anonymous young models featured in British tabloids.

With a staff of about 500 and part-time correspondents across the country, the paper covers West Germany thoroughly and is in a position to cover any breaking story.

Fust is always mindful of distribution patterns. Bild has about 80,000 outlets in West Germany and is one of the few German papers available on the day of issue in Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy and Spain.

The staff, despite the criticism, seems to be imbued with esprit de corps and a keen sense of competition. “We like to be first,” a Bild correspondent said. “We usually are.”

The paper was embarrassed several years ago when a well-known national investigative reporter, Guenter Wallraff, got a job as a Bild reporter and wrote a book about what he said were its sharp journalistic practices, its corner-cutting and its blatant inaccuracies.

In response, Bild brought out a book accusing the author of inaccurate reporting.

As for the future, Springer left control of the paper with a trust and his publishing empire continues to make comfortable profits.

“We want to be fair and objective and not be too friendly with any political party in Germany,” political editor Bilges said. “But we want to be an interesting paper, a surprising paper.”

Another senior editor, Fred Huck, added: “We are competitive, but it is fun to put out this paper. It is fun, and it is hard, hard work. A lot of outsiders don’t have any idea how much work there is here at Bild--or how much fun.”