Pressure at POLITICO

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, technology entrepreneur and Axel Springer board member Martin Varsavsky came across a post in his X feed that set him off. The post, from POLITICO, linked to an article on its website about recent Israeli strikes on Gaza. The article itself was an Associated Press wire story, republished in full—a standard practice for news outlets. But whether Varsavsky didn’t realize that or simply didn’t care, he was livid. What followed was an impassioned tirade.

“I am on the board of Axel Springer that owns POLITICO,” Varsavsky wrote. “I consider this article one-sided Hamas support. It fails to mention that the airstrikes were aimed at eliminating top Hamas military and that Israel was successful at doing so. It also quotes casualty figures given by Hamas that are not believed to be accurate.”

In follow-up posts, some of which were later deleted, Varsavsky insisted his frustration was not with Axel Springer’s management, but with POLITICO’s reporters, whom he accused of being “woke” and protected by timid leadership that “does not dare to fire them.” When pressed by a user on X about whether he planned to take action, Varsavsky cryptically replied that he was “working on it,” a statement that quickly became fodder for right-wing media outlets eager to see POLITICO forcibly pulled to the right.

Suffice to say, the posts also reverberated through the halls of POLITICO's Rosslyn headquarters. I’m told that Varsavsky’s outburst did not sit well with many of the outlet’s journalists, who obviously resented being labeled “woke” Hamas sympathizers by a board member of their parent company. When I asked Varsavsky on Tuesday whether he had realized that the story he was attacking was simply wire copy from the AP, he admitted, “No, I didn’t.” Still, he never walked back his claims or apologized for publicly attacking the integrity of the newsroom. A spokesperson for Axel Springer declined to comment on his behavior.