Special editions are printed in some favoured German holiday destinations abroad such as Spain, Italy, Turkey and Greece.

Bild said Guinness World Records in Germany has certified the print run as "the largest circulation for the free special edition of a newspaper".

[21] In 1977 investigative journalist Günter Wallraff worked for four months as an editor for the Bild tabloid in Hanover,[20] giving himself the pseudonym of "Hans Esser".

The staff commonly displayed contempt for humanity, a lack of respect for the privacy of ordinary people and widespread conduct of unethical research and editing techniques.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War in Europe, Bild focused on celebrity stories and became less political.

[20] Despite its general support for Germany's conservative parties and especially former chancellor Helmut Kohl, its rhetoric, still populist in tone, is less fierce than it was thirty years ago.

[20] Its traditionally less conservative Sunday paper Bild am Sonntag even supported Gerhard Schröder, a Social Democrat, in his bid for chancellor in 1998.

[6] After Julian Reichelt became editor in 2018, Bild took a generally anti-Angela Merkel line, and strengthened its anti-Putin, pro-NATO, pro-Israel position.

Der Spiegel wrote in 2006 that Bild "flies just under the nonsense threshold of American and British tabloids ... For the German desperate, it is a daily dose of high-resolution soft porn".

[31] It is argued Bild's thirst for sensationalism results in the terrorizing of prominent celebrities and stories are frequently based on the most dubious evidence.

BILDblog [de] is a popular German blog that when founded was dedicated solely to documenting errors and fabrications in Bild articles.

Heinrich Böll's 1974 novel The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, and the 1975 movie based on it, used a fictional stand-in for Bild to make a point about its allegedly unethical journalistic practices.

"[32] Judith Holofernes, lead singer of German band Wir sind Helden, wrote a scathing open letter to Bild's advertising agency after they asked her to star in a campaign.

"Bild is not a harmless guilty pleasure", she wrote, but a "dangerous political instrument—not only a high-magnification telescope into the abyss but an evil creature".

[23] Writer Max Goldt has described the paper as "an organ of infamy" and posited that "one has to be as impolite to its editors as is legally possible; they are bad people who do wrong".

[35][36][37] Lunz argues that Bild's frequent use of images of unclothed women makes its reporting of sexual assault and harassment "sexist and voyeuristic.