{"id":180841,"date":"2018-12-21T07:01:29","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T07:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=180841"},"modified":"2018-12-24T06:01:02","modified_gmt":"2018-12-24T06:01:02","slug":"der-spiegel-says-top-journalist-faked-stories-for-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=180841","title":{"rendered":"Der Spiegel says top journalist faked stories for years"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Kate Connelly \u2013 The Guardian Dec 19, 2018<\/h1>\n<div id=\"attachment_180842\" style=\"width: 550px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Claas-Relotius.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-180842\" class=\"wp-image-180842\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Claas-Relotius-1024x614.jpg\" alt=\"Claas Relotius \u2018made up stories and invented protagonists\u2019. click to enlarge\" width=\"540\" height=\"324\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Claas-Relotius-1024x614.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Claas-Relotius-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Claas-Relotius.jpg 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-180842\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Claas Relotius \u2018made up stories and invented protagonists\u2019. click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The German news magazine Der Spiegel has been plunged into chaos after revealing that one of its top reporters had falsified stories over several years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The media world was stunned by the revelations that the award-winning journalist Claas Relotius had, according to the weekly, \u201cmade up stories and invented protagonists\u201d in at least 14 out of 60 articles that appeared in its print and online editions, warning that other outlets could also be affected.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Relotius, 33, resigned after admitting to the scam. He had written for the magazine for seven years and won numerous awards for his investigative journalism, including CNN Journalist of the Year in 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Earlier this month, he won Germany\u2019s <em>Reporterpreis<\/em> (Reporter of the Year) for his story about a young Syrian boy, which the jurors praised for its \u201clightness, poetry and relevance\u201d. It has since emerged that all the sources for his reportage were at best hazy, and much of what he wrote was made up<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"de\" dir=\"ltr\">Claas Relotius: Er hat sein Talent missbraucht <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/W7htj1oOJQ\">https:\/\/t.co\/W7htj1oOJQ<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/KtZAsHwMOZ\">pic.twitter.com\/KtZAsHwMOZ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; WELT (@welt) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/welt\/status\/1075419242219126784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 19, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The falsification came to light after a colleague who worked with him on a story along the US-Mexican border raised suspicions about some of the details in Relotius\u2019s reporting, having harboured doubts about him for some time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The colleague, Juan Moreno, eventually tracked down two alleged sources quoted extensively by Relotius in the article, which was published in November. Both said they had never met Relotius. Relotius had also lied about seeing a hand-painted sign that read \u201cMexicans keep out\u201d, a subsequent investigation found.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Other fraudulent stories included one about a Yemeni prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, and one about the American football star <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2018\/dec\/06\/colin-kapernick-washington-quarterback-mark-sanchez\">Colin Kaepernick<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In a lengthy article, Spiegel, which sells about 725,000 print copies a week and has an online readership of more than 6.5 million, said it was \u201cshocked\u201d by the discovery and apologised to its readers and to anyone who may have been the subject of \u201cfraudulent quotes, made-up personal details or invented scenes at fictitious places\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The Hamburg-based magazine, which was founded in 1947 and is renowned for its in-depth investigative pieces, said Relotius had committed journalistic fraud \u201con a grand scale\u201d. It described the episode as \u201ca low point in Spiegel\u2019s 70-year history\u201d. An in-house commission has been set up to examine all of Relotius\u2019 work for the weekly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The reporter also wrote for a string of other well-known outlets, including the German newspapers taz, Welt and the Frankfurter Allgemeine\u2019s Sunday edition. Die Welt tweeted on Wednesday: \u201cHe abused his talent\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Relotius told Spiegel he regretted his actions and was deeply ashamed, the magazine said. \u201cI am sick and I need to get help,\u201d he was quoted as saying.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Moreno, who has worked for the magazine since 2007, risked his own job when he confronted other colleagues with his suspicions, many of whom did not want to believe him. \u201cFor three to four weeks Moreno went through hell because colleagues and those senior to him did not want to believe his accusations at first,\u201d Der Spiegel wrote in an apology to its readers. For several weeks, the magazine said, Relotius was even considered to be the victim of a cunning plot by Moreno.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">\u201cRelotius cleverly rebuffed all the attacks, all of Moreno\u2019s well-researched pieces of evidence \u2026 until there came a point when that didn\u2019t work any more, until he finally couldn\u2019t sleep any more, hunted by the fear of being discovered,\u201d the magazine wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Relotius, it added, finally gave himself up last week after being confronted by a senior editor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In his confession to his employer, he said: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t because of the next big thing. It was fear of failing. My pressure to not be able to fail got ever bigger the more successful I became.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The magazine, which is one of Germany\u2019s most prominent news organisations, is now trying to rescue its reputation amid fears a magazine already challenged by the problems in the German newspaper industry will struggle to recover.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">\u201cAll [his] colleagues are deeply shattered,\u201d the magazine wrote. In particular, it said, in the Society department, where he worked, \u201c[his] colleagues are astounded and sad \u2026 the affair feels like a death in the family.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2018\/dec\/19\/top-der-spiegel-journalist-resigns-over-fake-interviews\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Confirming that the main purveyor of fake news is the corporate media, the winner of CNN\u2019s 2014 Journalist of the Year has been caught literally making-up news stories <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-The_Media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=180841"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180889,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180841\/revisions\/180889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=180841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=180841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=180841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}