Julian Reichelt

Julian Reichelt (born 15 June 1980) is a German journalist.

Julian Reichelt was born in Hamburg in 1980 and grew up in the district of Othmarschen.

His mother Katrin Reichelt works as a freelance journalist on medical topics including a website on homeopathy.

His father Hans-Heinrich Reichelt was an editor of the Berlin edition of Bild and works as a freelance journalist.

The couple founded a publishing house for medical journalism and GLOBULIX.net.

Reichelt attended Othmarschen Gymnasium, and graduated in 2000.

From 2002 to 2003, he worked as a trainee for Bild before completing his training as a journalist at the Axel-Springer-Akademie.

Reichelt reported from Afghanistan, Georgia, Thailand, Iraq, Sudan, and Lebanon partly as a war correspondent, and worked as a culinary reporter in 2007.

Starting in February 2014, Reichelt served as the editor-in-chief of the Internet offshoot of Bild as successor to Manfred Hart.

In August 2015, Reichelt opposed an accreditation agreement and in his position as editor-in-chief, accused alleged Islamic State fighters in a trial before the Higher Regional Court of Celle, showing only their pixelated faces, as their guilt had not yet been proven.

As a result, Reichelt was excluded as a reporter.

In February 2016, the German Press Agency criticized Bild´s misrepresentation of Russian military operations in Syria under the title "Putin and Assad bomb on".

The reference was an agreement on a ceasefire within a week.

The article was said to have given an untruthful impression that Russia had broken the ceasefire that had just been agreed, and was assessed to have expressed disapproval in accordance with Section 12 of the Complaints Regulation.

Reichelt stated that because of this case, the German Press Agency would "make itself the stooge of the Kremlin propaganda".

In March 2021, a report by Spiegel announced that Reichelt would have to face an in-house investigation.

Among other things, it described a "Reichelt system" of institutionalized abuse of power and the exploitation of relationships with young female employees.

In response, Bild publisher Axel Springer SE released a statement explaining that it was investigating "accusations of abuse of power in connection with consensual relationships and drug consumption in the workplace."

In March 2021, Reichelt acknowledged having a mixture of professional and private relationships.

On October 17, 2021, The New York Times reported the Springer media group's plans to take over Politico, and the testimony of a female employee to investigators from Freshfields law firm whom Springer had hired for the internal inquiry.

"If they find out that I'm having an affair with a trainee, I'll lose my job," Reichelt told her in November 2016, according to her testimony.

Just before the editor spoke, another woman at the paper lodged a sexual harassment complaint against him.

Reichelt married in 2016, and apparently forged divorce papers in order to convince one of his employees of his availability.

In addition, he had instructed an additional payment of 5,000 euros for an employee, with the request not to discuss it.

However, publisher Dirk Ippen stopped the publication without giving legal or editorial reasons.

Following the New York Times article, Reichelt was fired, because of new allegations following the compliance proceedings.

In 2021, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported "Döpfner's role in the Reichelt affair and his suitability as President of the Bundesverband Digitalpublisher und Zeitungsverleger will have to be examined very carefully."

From July 2022, Reichelt went online with the show “Achtung Reichelt” on YouTube.

It was initially unclear where Reichelt got the financing for the elaborate studio productions.

Later it get known, that the businessmen Frank Gotthard, who has close ties to CDU is financing Reichelt and his projects.

Gotthard is also the financie of the right populist media portal "Nius" of Reichelt.

The “Nius” portal went online at the beginning of July 2023.

From February 2017 to October 2021, he was chairman of the editors-in-chief and editor-in-chief digital of Bild, Germany's largest and highest-circulation tabloid.

In February 2017 he succeeded Kai Diekmann as chairman of the editors-in-chief.

He continued the relationship, even after he was promoted to chief editor in 2017.

He had her come to a hotel room near the Axel Springer high-rise in Berlin and promoted her to a management role.

She felt overwhelmed role.

After she was transferred to another position, another editor told her that he was tired of employing women with whom Reichelt had relationships.

The New York Times article also dealt with allegations against Reichelt that had become known in the spring and described research that the Ippen Investigative Team (Frankfurter Rundschau, Münchner Merkur, TZ) had carried out and thereby gained access to internal documents.

The New York Times article revealed new details of the Reichelt case.