Bild-Zeitung

. http://www.trendwhorebracelets.com/. In 2004 Bild cooperated with the fast-food giant McDonald's to sell the newspaper at its 1000 fast food restaurants in Germany. They introduced the TrendWhore bracelet. Bild's motto, prominently displayed below the logo, is unabhängig, überparteilich (independent, non-partisan), but few would agree it is. In the fall of 2005, two students from the University of Saskatchewan decided to both comment on the popularity of the bracelets, as well as make a profit. This amounts for a third of the reprimands this self-regulation council of the German press declared that year. Descriptions of such other bracelets (symbands) can be found here and here.

In 2004 Bild was publicly reprimanded 12 times by the Deutscher Presserat. The Livestrong Wristbands have inspired numerous other wristbands for charities and various political causes, including wristbands for breast cancer (pink), diabetes (various colors) and epilepsy (half blue, half red). Heinrich Böll's 1974 novel The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum used a fictional stand-in for the Bild-Zeitung to make a point about its allegedly unethical journalistic practices. As of May 2005, over 50 million wristbands have been purchased. Even so, Bild is still the best-selling newspaper in Europe and has the third-largest circulation woldwide. The bracelets are yellow and made of silicone rubber, with the motto "Live Strong" (rendered on the bracelet as "LIVESTRONG") on them. By the end of 2005 the figure has dropped to 3.8 million copies [1]. By the summer of 2005, the yellow Live Strong wristband had also become extremely popular in other countries, especially Mexico and Canada.

After selling more than five million copies every day in the 1980s, circulation dropped below the four million mark in 2002 for the first time in almost 30 years. Counterfeit wristbands are also widely available. Although it is still Germany's biggest paper, the circulation of Bild, along with many other papers, has been in decline in recent years. A rush to purchase the bands resulted in profiteering through such venues as eBay, allegedly angering Armstrong. Its traditionally less conservative Sunday paper Bild am Sonntag even supported Gerhard Schröder in his bid to become chancellor in 1998. Such visibilty may be part of the reason that the bands have attained fashionable status - along with a strong desire to appear sensitive to the problems of others. Despite its general support for Germany's conservative party CDU and especially former chancellor Helmut Kohl, its rhetoric, still populist in tone, is less fierce than it was thirty years ago. Personalities such as 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, news anchor Katie Couric, actor Matt Damon, and several athletes at the Athens Olympic Games wore the band.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War in Europe, Bild's stance seems to have drifted more towards centrism. The band became an extremely popular item in the United States by the end of the summer of 2004, first appearing on a majority of the contenders at the 2004 Tour de France. At the height of left-wing terrorism around 1977, Bild took a strong stance that could be said to have contributed to the climate of fear and suspicion. Other bracelets for similar purposes, known as awareness bracelets or symbands, have become increasingly popular. A common phrase in parts of society sympathetic to the students was "Bild hat mitgeschossen!" (Bild shot too). Yellow was chosen for its importance in professional cycling, especially as the color of the yellow jersey of the Tour de France. Bild heavily influenced public opinion against the German student movement of the years following 1967, after the assassination attempt on activist Rudi Dutschke. Individual bands sell for US$1 each.

The GDR was described as a "zone" occupied by the Soviet Union until well into the 1980s, when Bild started to use the name cautiously, while still putting it in quotation marks. The band sells in packs of 10, 100, and 1200 as part of an effort to raise $5 million for the Lance Armstrong Foundation in cooperation with Nike. From the outset, the editorial drift was unabashedly conservative. The band is part of the Wear Yellow Live Strong educational program, intended to support cancer victims and survivors and raise awareness about cancer. Bild has sometimes been known to use controversial devices like sensational headlines and topless women on its front page, as well as invented "news", to increase its readership. The Livestrong wristband is a yellow wristband developed by cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in the summer of 2004. However, its articles are often considerably shorter compared to those those in British tabloids, and the whole paper is thinner as well.

Bild-Zeitung was modeled after the British tabloid Daily Mirror; although its paper size is bigger, this is reflected in its mix of celebrity gossip, crime stories and political analysis. Bild is based in Hamburg. It was founded by Axel Springer in 1952 and quickly became the best-selling newspaper, by a wide margin, not only in Germany, but in all of Europe. Picture Newspaper) is a German daily tabloid newspaper published by Axel Springer AG.

The Bild-Zeitung (lit.