It’s been described as Europe’s largest journalism scandal in years. The most well-known reporter for Der Spiegel, the continent’s most popular news magazine, has been found out. He’s populating his articles with made up facts, characters, and quotes for years.
Notably, he made up facts when he described a rural American town’s Trump supporting citizens. But he messed with the wrong town when he thought he could lie about Fergus Falls, Minnesota.
Claas Relotius, an award-winning journalist, co-authored a piece about a pro-Trump militia. But his co-author raised some alarms over the way that Relotius mischaracterized the people they had met. He had described some of these militia members as hunting down immigrants along Arizona’s Mexican border.
Der Spiegel’s “world class” fact-checking department employs 70 fact-checkers and might be the largest in the world. But the Minnesotans this reporter interviewed were never contacted to verify the story.
That’s a fail.
Consequently, the magazine announced it would look into all of his past articles and announce how many errors or outright lies they include. And it’s not looking good. So far 14 out of nearly 60 articles include fabrications. Relotius has since resigned from the magazine.
The Wall Street Journal has more:
Stefan Niggemeier, an independent media blogger in Berlin and a former Spiegel journalist, said some of the articles at issue appeared to confirm certain German stereotypes about Trump voters, asking “was this possible because of an ideological bias?”
A spokesman for Der Spiegel said that the magazine is investigating what if any role potential bias may have played.
I can save the magazine a little time. If this writer were a conservative, would he had felt the need to mischaracterize these people?
What other explanation could there be?
Hat Tip: The Wall Street Journal
Image Credit: Karl-Ludwig Poggemann via Flickr