What I'd be interested in is not the bare fact but details - e.g. how wide was the scope of the poll within the realm of journalism, was it a straw poll or scientific, who made it, when, framing of questions and such.

On some of your points:

5. The center is a moving target :-) And I think the right of the SPD, just like the left of the CDU/CSU as it befits a Volkspartei [how do you say that in English?], are beyond the overall centre.

6. You yourself contended that Merkel's current leftist economic policies (and perhaps foreign policy, too) run opposite to her and the CDU's 2005 campaign platform. (I could say her lust for power was so strong that she broke all her election promises to get into government in a Grand Coalition ;-) ) The media love for her dates from before the elections, and in fact, I even read some 'reformist' criticisms of her.

7. Kohl vs. SPIEGEL was legendary, but otherwise, you just named one of the examples I had in mind when I said "universal conservative meme". That Germany has RTL, Sat1 and Pro7 today was born out of Kohl's explicit intentions to 'balance' critical independent public media (coded as always as "left-leaning") with friendly media. The slant of the new privates is nowhere near as drastic as Fox News or Berlusconi's channels or even French media owned by Sarko's personal friends, but Bertelsmann (owner of RTL) is indeed a hardcore conservative giant in the Meinungsmacher business, and ProSiebenSat.1 can't be called left-of-center. Let's not forget about former German media giant Kirch, either, who was a bit too close personal friend of Kohl.