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The CEO for the parent company of Politico reportedly told editorial staff at the outlet this week that they should wholly embrace the company’s corporate “values,” which include support for Israel, or find work elsewhere, new reporting reveals.
Jewish Insider reported on the meeting held this week between Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner and Politico staffers and executives.
He told staff on the call that “nobody should work for Axel Springer despite the essentials or in disagreement with one of the essentials.” Appearing to suggest that staff should find work elsewhere if they disagree, he went on to note that “there are many options where values do not play such a role — or where other values play a role.”
The CEO is referring to a set of corporate values, which it calls the “Essentials,” written by German founder Axel Springer in 1967. According to the company’s website, the second of the company’s five values is: “We support the right of existence of the State of Israel and oppose all forms of antisemitism.” Other values include that the company works to “uphold the principles of a free market economy.”
The meeting came after Politico staffers sent a letter on Friday to their new editor-in-chief and former Politico executive, Jonathan Greenberger, expressing concerns over Döpfner’s “repeated use of POLITICO to promote his political agenda.”
The letter, per Semafor, referred to two recent op-eds by Döpfner for Politico Magazine. One, in March, cheered on the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran and called for European states to take action against the “terrorist state,” which he claims aims for “the destruction of Israel and all Jews,” as well as the destruction of the Western “way of life.”
The other, published in October, proclaims that “Europe Failed Israel.” In this op-ed, the CEO of Axel Springer — a media giant which owns numerous outlets including Business Insider, Morning Brew, and The Telegraph Media Group — repeated gripes about supposed antisemitic sentiment in Europe in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
In the meeting, Döpfner doubled down on his op-eds, per Jewish Insider, vowing to “write more in the future, not less.” The part of the letter that “honestly irritated me most,” he said, was that staff took issue with his assertion that Iran is the aggressor in the war.
“The wording is more a euphemism. We should rather say they’re terrorists, or they are mass murderers. That would be more appropriate, given the kind of spread of terrorism with Iranian proxies from Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi and other terrorist organizations. I think to position that as an aggressor is a mild version of what it is,” Döpfner said, according to the recording of the call obtained by Jewish Insider.
When asked by a reporter how they, as journalists, could provide evidence of Iran being an “aggressor” seeking nuclear weapons, he said that they don’t have to prove things that are “so obvious, so proven for many times,” though even U.S. intelligence sources have found no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.
He also said that “we think Zionism is, and that is the official definition, Israel’s right of self-determination and of its right to exist as a safe haven for Jews.” Questioning that ideology, he suggested, is to question the “very fundamental principles of our values” and should lead to a decision about whether “somebody who has so fundamentally different beliefs is really a good fit.”
Even despite such coercive statements, Döpfner said that signing on to the “essentials” is a “symbolic act” — but said that it’s most important that employees of the company have a personal attachment to those values.
Axel Springer properties have previously come under fire for adhering to the company’s staunchly pro-Israel stance. Shortly after Israel’s genocide first began in October 2023, European news aggregator Upday reportedly instructed workers to suppress news about Palestinian death tolls or casualties. At the time, Axel Springer denied the allegations, but pointed journalists to the company’s “essentials” backing Israel’s right to exist.
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