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Der Spiegel reporter and editor who won a CNN "journalist of the
year" award was caught fabricating stories out of whole cloth.
From Fox
News:
The German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that one of its top
award-winning journalists fabricated many of his articles, inventing
characters, sources, and their quotes 'on a grand scale' for many years.
The German magazine Der Spiegel revealed Wednesday that one of its top
award-winning journalists fabricated many of his articles, inventing
characters, sources, and their quotes “on a grand scale” for many years.
Claas Relotius, a reporter and editor, admitted to fabricating parts of at
least 14 stories following the magazine’s internal investigation. The
publication said the issue “marks a low point in the 70-year history of Der
Spiegel.”
“I am sick and I need to get help,” he reportedly told the magazine.
The reporter contributed around 60 articles to Der Spiegel, one of the
leading German magazines for investigative reporting. He previously worked
for other publications in Europe and won awards such as CNN Journalist of the
Year in 2014.
More from The
Daily Mail:
One of the stories that brought Relotius down was the one he
wrote about residents of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, a town that overwhelmingly
voted for President Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
Spiegel wrote that it was in March 2017 when an article headlined 'In a Small
Town,' a snapshot of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, appeared in Der Spiegel.
According to the news outlet, 'the plan was for Relotius to rent an apartment
in Fergus Falls, meet people, listen to what they had to say, and produce a
snapshot that would allow readers to gain a slightly better understanding of
the Americans'.
However, like many reporters, Relotius realized he didn't have a story.
'DER SPIEGEL gives its reporters a very free hand in situations like these.
No staff member -- especially not one that had published the kind of stories
Relotius had -- has to worry about getting into hot water for failing to
bring home a story,' the magazine said.
The magazine said that Relotius 'simply refused to accept those realities'
and wrote a tall tale about Fergus Falls.
Relotius lied about seeing a hand-painted welcome sign that read 'Mexicans
Keep Out', that he claimed was sitting at the edge of the town.
But the sign didn't exist and never had.
'He passed on his creation as fact to hundreds of thousands of readers -- and
insulted the inhabitants of Fergus Falls in the process,' Spiegel said.
'Relotius gave the inhabitants of Fergus Falls made-up biographies to suit
his needs, as if he were a puppeteer.
'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."'
According to the magazine, it was all 'pure fiction. Every single bit is
concocted bunk'.
Locals Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn exposed
that story in more detail.
The Daily Mail also reported that earlier this month Relotius "was named
German Reporter of the Year for a story about a young Syrian boy."
Last year he dropped this propaganda piece titled, "A
Syrian Family's Quest to Become German":
TIME Magazine hailed
Der Spiegel last year for "having one of the world's biggest
fact-checking departments."
Not one of these "fact checkers" caught wind of any of his blatant
fabrications. The idea these major news organizations are sitting around
fact-checking everything they put out is a total myth. Their editors' main
goals are making sure everything they publish suits the narrative.
How many other reporters are running this same scam?
The Guardian has
still yet to fess up about what really happened with their fabricated
story on Julian Assange meeting multiple times in secret with Paul Manafort!
After this story broke on Thursday, CNN's Brian Stelter responded by saying
it's only "Anti-CNN twitter accounts" who are criticizing his
propaganda network:
Just because Relotius was CNN's "journalist of the year" doesn't
mean CNN had anything to do with it!
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