Hired by Der Spiegel in 2011, Relotius wrote fake stories for 7 years, was a top reporter who 18 months ago was promoted to editor. Below, Der Spiegel cover, 2/4/2017. Trump had just been inaugurated, but Der Spiegel was already selling violent anti-American hate and division. No suggestion on the cover that 63 million Americans saw Trump as their only chance to stop the mass murdering, US taxpayer funded Endless Unwinnable War Industry. If Der Spiegel is curious about that they could ask us.
12/24/18, “Disgraced [anti-Trump Der Spiegel] German reporter [lauded by CNN] may have embezzled donations intended for Syrian orphans," CBSNews.com
“A
German [Der Spiegel] journalist who who resigned in disgrace for making
up information for numerous articles is suspected of embezzling
donations he collected on behalf of children orphaned by the war in
Syria. Influential German news weekly Der Spiegel said Sunday that its award-winning former reporter, Claas Relotius, had asked readers by email from his private account for donations to be transferred to his personal bank account. Der Spiegel said it’s not clear how many people donated money, how much Relotius, 33, collected or what happened to the money.
But the magazine said it will press charges and will work with prosecutors to find out the details.“Der Spiegel will give all the information it collects to public prosecutors as part of a criminal complaint,” it said on its website. The Hamburg-based magazine announced Wednesday that Relotius, who reportedly resigned, had fabricated interviews and facts in at least 14 articles in the magazine’s print and online editions.
It said it had been unaware of the campaign and that it was not immediately clear how much money was raised from the appeal, apparently made by email to readers who contacted him about the story.
Spiegel published the article by Relotius in July 2016 but a Turkish photographer who worked with him on the piece has since noted significant inaccuracies.
The magazine said it now believes Relotius may have simply made up one of the main protagonists, whom the article described as young siblings.
Relotius described his attempts to help the children in a subsequent collection of articles, including a months-long effort to bring the children to Germany to be adopted by a family. Spiegel said this also appeared to be a lie.
In its most recent edition, the magazine said the scam was the “worst thing that can happen to an editorial team.”
Acknowledging the damage to faith in its own work and the media in general, it apologized promised to “do everything to boost our credibility again.”
…………………………………..
Added: Washington Examiner article: Invented Der Spiegel story sought to show that voters in rural America were mentally defective idiots “who pray for Trump on Sundays:"
12/20/18, “Journalist who mocked Trump supporters in fabricated story admits: ‘I’m sick’," Washington Examiner, Caitlin Yilek
“German magazine Der Spiegel has fired one of its top journalists after it discovered he had fabricated more than a dozen stories in recent years, including an article about Trump supporters in a small Minnesota town.
“I’m sick and I need to get help,” Claas Relotius, who was CNN International’s Journalist of the Year, told Der Spiegel. The fabrications were discovered after a colleague working with Relotius on a story about the U.S.-Mexico border raised suspicions about his reporting.
One of the made up stories, “In a small town,” was billed as “a month with the people who pray for Trump on Sundays” and described Fergus Falls, Minnesota, as a typical rural town that helped propel President Trump to the White House in 2016 – though he just fell short in Minnesota.
Relotius reported false information about several of the town’s residents — or completely made up people — including that the city administrator did not want a female president and was a virgin, that a restaurant waitress with kidney disease was struggling to afford treatment under Obamacare, and that local students visiting New York visited Trump Tower instead of the Statue of Liberty.
Two residents of Fergus Falls, Michele Anderson, who notes she’s a “die-hard liberal,” and Jake Krohn, pushed back on 11 of the fabrications in a blog post Wednesday [“Der Spiegel journalist messed with the wrong small town"]
“There are only two things those writers seem to have concluded or are able to pitch to their editors — we are either backwards, living in the past and have our heads up our asses, or we’re like dumb, endearing animals that just need a little attention in order to keep us from eating the rest of the world alive,” they wrote about journalists who have made sweeping generalizations about people who live in rural parts of the country.
Der Spiegel listed other fabrications made in the article, such a welcome sign for the town that said, “Mexicans Keep Out,” that never existed.
“He invented grotesque lies and reported, for example, that the students at the John F. Kennedy high school drew their role models for the American dream as follows: ‘They did not draw a single picture of a woman,’ Relotius wrote. ‘One class drew Barack Obama, two drew John D. Rockefeller. Most of them drew Donald Trump.’ All of this is pure fiction. Every single bit is concocted bunk,” the magazine said.
Other fabrications included easily verifiable assertions, including that the film “American Sniper,” two years old at the time of Relotius’ reporting, was still running at the town’s theater to sold-out crowds and a description of the view from a downtown cafe, an establishment that lacks windows.
Relotius, who was hired by Der Speigel in 2011, received several awards from CNN for his work. The company said it is stripping Relotius of those awards. He wrote about 60 articles for the magazine and website before he was fired this week.”
………………………………
Added: CNN Business article: “Other news organizations could be affected” in addition to Der Spiegel. A Relotius article for Swiss magazine Reportagen “received two CNN Journalist Awards in 2014, including Journalist of the Year.”
Dec. 21, 2018, “Germany’s Der Spiegel says star reporter Claas Relotius wrote fake stories ‘on a grand scale’,” CNN Business, Sherisse Pham, Hong Kong
“A top European news magazine has fired one of its star journalists after discovering that he had fabricated facts and sources in more than a dozen articles over a seven-year period.”
“Claas Relotius, a reporter and editor, falsified his articles on a grand scale and even invented characters, deceiving both readers and his colleagues,” Germany’s Der Spiegel said in an article published online Wednesday.
The startling revelation is a heavy blow to Der Spiegel, a 71-year-old publication that’s renowned for its quality journalism and read by hundreds of thousands of people in print and by millions online.
“I’m so angry, horrified, shocked, stunned,” the magazine’s deputy foreign editor Mathieu von Rohr tweeted. “Claas Relotius faked, he cheated all of us.”
After a colleague working with Relotius on a story in the United States flagged suspicions about his reporting, Der Spiegel says it carried out an internal investigation. Relotius confessed last week that he invented entire passages for that article, and also falsified information in other stories, according to the magazine.
Relotius, who resigned Monday at the magazine’s request, said he was sick and needed help, a Der Spiegel spokesman told CNN. CNN hasn’t been able to reach Relotius for comment.
Award-winning stories
His work had received awards from CNN, but a CNN spokesperson said, “Relotius was not associated with CNN, he never worked for the company and never had anything published on CNN platforms.”
Relotius first joined Der Spiegel in 2011 as a freelancer, and was hired as an editor a year and half ago.
Der Spiegel said the 33-year-old admitted to partial fabrications in at least 14 of nearly 60 articles he wrote for its magazine and website. That included making up dialogue and quotes and creating composite characters. The magazine warned that the number could be higher, and that other news organizations could be affected.
Relotius has published stories in other leading German-language publications, including Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, the Financial Times Deutschland, Die Welt and Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, according to Der Spiegel.
He also penned a feature for Swiss magazine Reportagen, for which he received two CNN Journalist Awards in 2014, including Journalist of the Year. The CNN Journalist Awards were for German-language journalism and decided by an independent jury. The last awards were given in 2015.
A spokesman for CNN said Thursday that the 2014 awards jury held a meeting after Der Spiegel went public with its investigation, and voted unanimously to strip Relotius of both awards.
Forbes identified Relotius as a top reporter last year, including him on a “30 Under 30” list for European media.
Several major features Relotius wrote for Der Spiegel that were also nominated for or won journalism awards are now under scrutiny, according to the magazine.
Among them, “The Last Witness,” about an American who allegedly travels to an execution as a witness, “Lion Children,” about two Iraqi children who have been kidnapped and reeducated by the Islamic State, and “Number 440,” a feature about alleged prisoners at the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Investigation continues
Der Spiegel said it is still combing through the allegations against Relotius and will set up a commission made up of people from both inside and outside the company to investigate his work.
For now, Relotius’ stories will be left unaltered online, but with a notification telling readers that his reporting is under suspicion of extensive forgery and manipulation.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung said Thursday that it was reviewing the stories by Relotius it had published. It said that no evidence of forgery had yet been found.
Der Spiegel is the latest prominent news organization to be rocked by revelations of a high-flying reporter falsifying information.
In 2003, The New York Times discovered that one of its rising stars, Jayson Blair, had invented parts of his stories and stolen material from other news outlets. The scandal resulted in the resignations of Blair and the newspaper’s top two editors.
At The New Republic, Stephen Glass was considered a brilliant 25-year-old magazine writer, until he was unmasked as a serial fabricator and fired in 1998.”
“Nadine Schmidt and Jethro Mullen contributed to this report.”
..............................
Added: "None of this is about Trump, or about whether you like him or not, or even if he’s a shady character or not. Instead, it’s about the influence the media have on how our opinions and ideas about people and events are being shaped on a daily basis....
It has nothing to do with journalism, though, or news. It’s smear and dirt, the business model of the National Enquirer. That’s how far our once truthful media have fallen."
12/25/2018, "Dumping on The Donald," by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth, via zero hedge
"None of this is about Trump, or about whether you like him or not, or even if he’s a shady character or not. Instead, it’s about the influence the media have on how our opinions and ideas about people and events are being shaped on a daily basis.
And once you acknowledge that your opinions of Trump, Putin et al, even without any proof of a connection between them, are actively being molded by the press you expect to inform you about the truth behind what goes on, you will have to acknowledge, too, that you are a captive of forces that use your gullibility to make a profit off you.
If our media need to make up things all the time about who’s guilty of what, because our justice systems are incapable of that, then we have a problem so enormous we may not be able to overcome it in our present settings.
Alternatively, if we trust our justice systems to deliver true justice, we don’t need a hundred articles a day to tell us how Trump or Putin are such terrible threats to our world. Our judges will tell us, not our journalists or media who are only in it for a profit.
I can say: “let’s start off 2019 trying to leave prejudice behind”, and as much as that is needed and you may agree with me, it’s no use if you don’t realize to what extent your views of the world have been shaped by prejudice.
I see people reacting to the star writer at Der Spiegel who wrote a lot about Trump, being exposed as a fraud. I also see people trying to defend Julian Assange from the Guardian article about his alleged meetings with Paul Manafort, that was an obvious big fat lie (the truth is Manafort talked to Ecuador to help them ‘sell’ Assange to the US).
But reacting to the very obvious stuff is not enough. The echo chamber distorts the truth about Trump every single day, and at least six times on Sunday, as this essay of mine shows. It’s just that after two years of this going on 24/7, it is perceived as the normal.
Everyone makes money dumping on the Donald, it’s a proven success formula, so why would the Guardian and Der Spiegel stay behind? They’d only hurt their own bottom line.
It has nothing to do with journalism, though, or news. It’s smear and dirt, the business model of the National Enquirer. That’s how far our once truthful media have fallen."
.................
................
No comments:
Post a Comment