Der Spiegel

50.5 percent of shares are held by Spiegel-Mitarbeiter KG (Spiegel’s staffmembers’ limited partnership), Gruner + Jahr (Bertelsmann) publishing company has another 25.5 percent of shares and the remaining 24 percent belong to the heirs of the media founder, Rudolf Augstein.

Der Spiegel, which has a weekly circulation of 820,000 copies, is considered the most influential political weekly in Germany. Its online version, Spiegel Online, is ranked as one of most visited news websites in German-speaking territories. Its ownership structure is very unusual for an influential outlet: 50.5 percent of the publishing house’s shares belong to the society of its 760 staff members. Significant influence on Der Spiegel is also exerted by Bertelsmann, the biggest European media group, which holds 25 percent of shares of Der Spiegel publishing house via its subsidiary company, Gruner + Jahr.

A pro-US and pro-NATO stance is evident, as it dominates the media’s policy, just as in almost all mainstream German-speaking media. Additionally, many former or active staff members of the publishing house are members of the Atlantik-Brücke (‘Atlantic Bridge’) lobby organization.

Campaigns launched by Der Spiegel or Spiegel Online in which they rush to put blame on particular scapegoats take place rather often. This was especially conspicuous in the case of toxic gas use in the Ghouta region in Syria in 2013. Der Spiegel’s actions also caused a wave of mass indignation in July 2014 when its front page bore the headline "Stop Putin now!" against the background of a collage made from the private photos of the MH17 crash victims. The front page article exploited the crash victims and presented extremely one-sided and deliberately emotive coverage. As a result, it led to an angry reaction and calls for a boycott of Der Spiegel.

However, after revelations made by Edward Snowden, Der Spiegel under its then editor-in-chief, Georg Mascolo, played a rather informative role in the NSA scandal. Even though Mascolo is also a member of the Atlantik-Brücke, until now, he has proven a harsh critic of mass surveillance. Moreover, the medium repeatedly cooperated with WikiLeaks and Glenn Greenwald in breaking the story. In the meantime, Mascolo now continues his work in the German investigative journalistic consortium of the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily and NDR and WDR public broadcasting stations.

In December 2015 Der Spiegel presented its so called "Agenda 2018" and announced that as a result of economic problems 150 employees must leave the publishing house.

Der Spiegel’s Editor-in-Chief Klaus Brinkbäumer, who was born in 1967, has been working as a journalist since graduation. As well as being editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel, he is an associate professor at Hamburg’s Journalism Academy (Hamburger Akademie für Publizistik) and in the Young Journalistic Talent Promotion Academy in Munich (Institut zur Förderung publizistischen Nachwuchses (ifp)).

Before taking his position, Brinkbäumer worked as Spiegel’s New-York correspondent and then as a deputy editor-in-chief. He has held his current role since January 13, 2015, after his predecessor, Wolfgang Büchner, left the job.

Minority owner Jakob Augstein is one of the heirs of the Spiegel’s founder, Rudolf Augstein. However, in Spiegel, he acts only as a columnist with a moderate left-wing position. At the same time, Jakob Augstein is an executive editor and editor-in-chief in the leftist weekly Der Freitag with a circulation amounting to almost 20,000 copies.

In April 2015, different media reported that both Jakob Augstein and two other of Rudolf Augstein’s heirs want to sell their shares.

Editor-in-Chief of Spiegel Online Florian Harms, born in 1973, is from a family of journalists and gained experience of working abroad, particularly in Damascus. After studying Islamic studies and political sciences, he worked first as a freelance journalist. From 2004, he worked as freelance editor at Der Spiegel and then as a staff editor. Harms was quickly promoted to head of department in the publishing house and eventually became editor-in-chief of Spiegel Online during a change of management in January 2015.

In his article "Was ist der Spiegel" (What is Der Spiegel), David Noack defines the magazine as a "media outlet of a specific interest group of liberal nationalist Atlanticists" and describes the ties between Der Spiegel and CIA that go back up to the times when the media was established. The media’s revelations concerning the Bundeswehr’s (German armed forces) relative defense capacity in case of war in 1962 ended up in the historic Spiegel scandal (it was one of the major political scandals in West Germany after World War II, in which the magazine entered into conflict with the defense minister and was accused of high treason for publishing secret materials).

In 1979, an alleged surveillance photo of the East Germany’s intelligence chief, Markus Wolf, published on Der Spiegel’s front page, raised questions about its origin. The photo depicted Wolf, labeled in the West as ‘A man without a face’, who had never been exposed to the public before, attending a secret meeting in Stockholm.

However, Der Spiegel soon came under the scrutiny of US intelligence. In July 2015, it was revealed that the CIA had spied on Spiegel’s office and handed over the data to the German authorities in 2011.

Under Büchner, a heated conflict broke out within the team. It was caused by the appointment of the former BILD deputy editor-in-chief, Nikolaus Blome, to a post within the Spiegel’s top management, as well as the outlet’s slide towards a more tabloid style.

A statement by former Spiegel journalist Harald Schumann (who now works for Tagesspiegel) attracted some public attention, as he sharply criticized the lack of freedom of the press in Germany. Schumann claimed in an interview that since 1999 he had been de facto censored when he worked for Der Spiegel.