German "Spiegel" in HUGE scandal, US attacks them for spreading fake news

[Tender Branson]

HANOVER, Germany — Der Spiegel has announced that it will press charges against a former star reporter accused of systemically faking interviews and articles, in what might be the biggest journalism scandal in Germany since another newsmagazine published fake Hitler diaries 35 years ago.

The announcement came as the United States ambassador waded into the scandal by accusing the newsmagazine of anti-American bias and calling for an independent audit.

Richard Grenell, the American ambassador to Germany, wrote a letter to Der Spiegel on Friday that appeared to try to tie the fraud committed by the reporter, Claas Relotius, 33, to the newsmagazine’s editorial methods.

Some of the most notable articles that Mr. Relotius admitted faking are set in the United States, such as a profiles of a religious activist who travels the country to witness executions, anti-immigrant militiamen in Arizona and a town of Trump supporters in Minnesota.

“These fake news stories largely focus on U.S. policies and certain segments of the American people,” Mr. Grenell wrote in the letter, which was published by the newsmagazine.

“We have previously voiced our concerns directly to Spiegel editors and journalists regarding bias in reporting on U.S. policy and the U.S. Administration,” the ambassador wrote.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/world/europe/germany-der-spiegel-claas-relotius.html

This is not good news for the established news media and will play into the hands of Trump and the European far-right ...

[dead0man]

oh my, that's a bit embarrassing.

[PSOL]

Der Spiegel outright admitted it and is posting a 23 page apology to its readers, something that Brietbart and Fox News will never do. I’d say this only increases the credibility of the paper, showing that falsehoods are not to be moved on to the next scandal.

[kelestian]

I've read some articles of this author, those are obviously fake, it's strange that his lies weren't discovered earlier.

[palandio]

Relotius himself is just a poor pathological case who urgently needs help. I hope that he somehow manages to cope with the situation and find another job.

Shame on the people who gave him his multiple awards. Shame on people like Ines Pohl who gave the honorific speech for Relotius' German Reporting Award and predicted that Relotius' kitschy report about the boy who believed to have caused the Syrian civil war would "make it into the textbooks". Shame on all the people who made him into a rising star of German journalism because his made-up black-and-white stories exactly confirmed their worldview.

In the end it is still relieving that the majority of Spiegel and the German media seems to recognize most of the problem. Hopefully this change something.

[President Johnson]

Yes, this pretty disgraceful. I hope he gets a tough sentence for lying and defalcating donations.

But it's good they've admitted it outright unlike some right-wing media. Hopefully they can get their act together and make sure false publications get out anymore.

[palandio]

Yes, this pretty disgraceful. I hope he gets a tough sentence for lying and defalcating donations.

But it's good they've admitted it outright unlike some right-wing media. Hopefully they can get their act together and make sure false publications get out anymore.

No. The problem is not only the shameless impostor who maliciously defrauded Der Spiegel and relevant parts of German journalism. The problem is that too many people let fall the standards of fact-checking and good journalism when a kitschy article fits into the 'good' worldview.

(By the way many right-wing and all the Russian propaganda outlets are at least as bad and probably far worse. Still, being on the 'good' side doesn't justify spreading fake news.)

[Sestak]

This Medium post is definitely worth reading re: what’s happened here. I don’t like Grenell, but he has a point on this.

[Pandaguineapig]

It really points to the flaws in Spiegel's editors that, even though they are a decidedly hard left publication, they never bothered to fact check or verify anything. They simply bought into his bs because it satisfied their confirmation bias, I'm sure Claas Relotius can probably get a job at CNN after this