You bring up an interesting ‘twist’ on the 2008 episode. The Arte folks mentioned in the article you listed....are a public TV network (not financially tied to the government, but financed by the mandatory TV tax on the general public). To fill content....Arte buys up documentary pieces. I will say of the 15-odd public-run TV networks...this is probably the least watched network in the country.
The Bertelsmann company is a private publishing ‘empire’ and you’d generally say they lean left, and have connections leading back to the SPD Party. Bertelsmann owns their weekly news magazine, Der Spiegel.
When the public tired of the public-TV business in the 1980s...it was Bartelsmann that financed to some degree commercial TV, and the arrival of RTL.
Facebook outsources fight against racist posts in Germany
Bertelsmann is Deep State.