‘A full-on embrace’: how the EU’s largest news publisher fell in love with the US

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.
In his books, interviews and the op-eds that regularly appear under his name in Springer-owned outlets, Döpfner portrays this expansion as being driven above all by a political vision: the need to shore up the values of the west.
But critics say such lofty goals are sometimes undermined by the pages of his own titles.
Before the Orbán controversy, Die Welt caused a scandal in 2024 when it ran an op-ed by Elon Musk urging German voters to back the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, which led to the paper’s opinion editor resigning in protest. It took another staff rebellion to stave off an editorial from the former AfD co-leader Alexander Gauland a year later.
Döpfner has said the AfD’s policies are “the opposite of what Axel Springer stands for”, and none of his outlets have explicitly backed the far right outside op-eds, which often platform opinions that differ from a newspaper’s own editorial stance.
But as Europe slowly retreats from an increasingly erratic US, the EU’s largest news publisher looks determined to single-handedly reverse the trend. Enthusiastic for all things American and strategically uninterested in European autonomy, Axel Springer is boosting the political disruptors beloved of Silicon Valley almost by default, critics say.
“In spite of everything we’ve learnt about [Donald] Trump and Musk over the last year, Döpfner and his crowd are still true believers,” said Matthew Karnitschnig, a former Politico chief correspondent in Europe, who left Axel Springer last year to head up the Brussels-based news site Euractiv. “It’s a full-on embrace.”
None of the former or current Springer employees interviewed for this article said Döpfner had directly intervened in editorial matters, and in a statement a company spokesperson said: “Editorial independence is sacrosanct at Axel Springer. We believe that the best way to safeguard that is through financial and economic success.”
A self-described “mix between carpet-bagger and aesthete”, Döpfner got his break in journalism by writing album reviews and profiles of conductors for the highbrow broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung while studying for his PhD.
Even then, former colleagues recall a talent for charming the executive floor. “Some music critics care only about music, but that was not Mathias,” recalls one former colleague. “There was a sense he was destined for higher things, like a nobleman without a title.”
After editing two ailing regional newspapers, Döpfner rose up the ranks at Springer, editing Welt before being made the publishing house’s chief executive in 2002. He has been its main shareholder since 2020, when its founder’s widow, 83-year-old Friede Springer, gave him a 15% stake in the company.
In the early 2010s Döpfner made a series of bold strategic decisions, dumping the venerable print titles Berliner Morgenpost and Hamburger Abendblatt and investing in digital classifieds. It paid off financially, and earned him a reputation as a digital visionary, not least in the corridors of his own company.
One employee described his reputation among staff as “guru-like”. “There’s something that being in the same room as Mathias Döpfner does to other men,” said one former member of staff. Another noted male staff members’ tendency to copy the chief executive’s sartorial style, from three-piece suits to a more recent penchant for a “Miami Vice” combo of suit jackets, T-shirts and white trainers.
Döpfner’s reputation survived a sexual misconduct allegation under his watch in 2021, when Bild’s pugilistic editor, Julian Reichelt, was found to have promoted a female employee to a high-level newsroom job while having an affair with her.
More recently, Döpfner’s pronouncements on the future of news publishing have attained a prophetic fervour. Last summer, the company announced its intention to double its value within five years, by expanding media marketing platforms and exploring “AI-based journalism”.
Shortly after, Bild had to withdraw an error-strewn article that had apparently been based on an AI-generated synopsis of a Swiss documentary. When confronted about the case, Döpfner doubled down, saying in an interview: “No one here has to justify themselves for using artificial intelligence for articles, presentations, speeches, whatever. Only those who don’t use it have to justify themselves.”
The company now acknowledges the article was a mistake and says it is introducing new processes to ensure the accuracy of AI-assisted journalism.
Axel Springer’s record of making news journalism succeed in the digital sphere is patchy. Bild is the most visited German-language news portal in the world, but it comes bottom of the pile in surveys on trustworthiness. A three-year project to build a “multi-platform universe” with an in-house “Bild TV” live channel, costing tens of millions of euros, was discontinued after three years in 2023.
When it comes to politics, there is also a sense that the vision that holds sway on Springer’s executive floor has been drifting apart from German society at large. While the company’s German titles are broadly supportive of chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives and ferociously critical of the German Greens, Döpfner’s true instincts “are that of a libertarian”, said one ex-employee.
Private text messages that were leaked to German media in 2023 showed that Döpfner had urged Bild’s then editor to “do more for the FDP”, a small pro-business party that dropped out of parliament at the last federal elections.
A podcast series in which Döpfner interviews figures in public life, launched last autumn under the title “MD Meets”, has so far featured mostly the chief executives of tech companies. The only European politician to have appeared on it is Orbán.
With Politico Europe, Springer owns one of the few English-language outlets focused on reporting on decision-making in Brussels, but the publishing house’s passion for the European project seems to have dimmed. “They don’t think that much about Europe, other than it’s this big bureaucratic apparatus that needs to be lobbied,” said Karnitschnig.
Döpfner’s passion for all things American, meanwhile, has grown even in the face of a US president who has pulled up barriers to trade with Europe and disparaged Nato allies.
Last June, as Europe struggled to manage an unpredictable White House, the publishing company deleted a commitment to a “united Europe” from its “essentials” – the five core values that its German employees are contractually obliged to uphold. The clause was replaced with advocating “an alliance between the United States of America and Europe”.
In a December 2025 opinion article published in Politico and Welt, Döpfner said Trump wanted “a strong Europe, a reliable and effective partner”, and warned Europeans against reacting to inflammatory talk with “hauteur”. He reiterated that message in another article in Politico this week, accusing European leaders of “alienating” their main ally by criticising Trump’s war in Iran.
“The romantic view of the Anglosphere runs deep inside Axel Springer,” said one company insider. “And Mathias is the biggest romantic of them all.”
Döpfner has done little to hide his admiration for the Wall Street Journal, fuelling speculation that his company has in the past been keen to buy the newspaper off Rupert Murdoch. The Telegraph may go some way to serving as a substitute, as well as considerably increasing Axel Springer’s base of English-language subscribers.
Döpfner’s suggestion that Springer could move into the top spot in the American market, however, seems unrealistic. “Especially on the rightwing spectrum, media consumers in the US lean towards broadcasting and podcasts,” said Abi Watson of Enders Analysis. “It’s a difficult market to launch into.”
A spokesperson said in a statement: “Axel Springer stands for freedom, free speech, the rule of law and democracy. As owners Axel Springer will grow the Telegraph Media Group while preserving its distinctive character and legacy, to help it become the most read and intellectually inspiring centre-right media in the English-speaking world. This will protect British journalism, of which the Daily and Sunday Telegraph is known as a quality institution.”