Our particular responsibility as a media company

The media are both a business and a cultural asset. Whenever we create, bundle or disseminate media content and products, we fulfill important functions in society: to inform, entertain and educate. This is associated with a particular responsibility.

Each day, millions of people view, listen to, and read our products: They watch RTL Group programs and broadcasts, immerse themselves in books published by Random House, and turn to Gruner + Jahr’s magazines for information and entertainment. Also the reliability of the services provided by Arvato is highly trusted. But is this high level of customer acceptance enough to legitimize our work? Who in fact decides what information and what type of entertainment we produce on a daily basis? What about the quality of our content? How important is protecting our content – as intellectual property – for the work of our authors, artists and creative talents? What prerequisites do people look for – whether intellectual or technical – in order to use our media content and products – and how can we support them here? How can we use the attention our media generates on a daily basis for a good cause? And how do we ultimately ensure our customers are satisfied?

All of this goes to show that as a media company we deal with very specific issues of social responsibility. Our answers to this challenge can be found on the following pages.