A reporter at the leftist German news magazine Der Spiegel — who won CNN’s Journalist of the Year Award in 2014 — resigned on Wednesday after a "comprehensive confession" of Faking the News like a Janet Cooke or Jayson Blair. At least 14 of the 60 articles he submitted to the magazine were fraudulent.
Suspicions surfaced from his colleague Juan Moreno over a story they reported together about vigilante groups at the American border with Mexico. Der Spiegel issued a statement in a Q&A format which admitted:
Claas Relotius, a reporter and editor, falsified his articles on a grand scale and even invented characters, deceiving both readers and his colleagues. This has been uncovered as a result of tips, internal research and, ultimately, a comprehensive confession by the editor himself....
Claas Relotius committed his deception intentionally, methodically and with criminal intent. For example, he included individuals in his stories who he had never met or spoken to, telling their stories or quoting them. Instead, he would reveal, he based the depictions on other media or video recordings. By doing so, he created composite characters of people who actually did exist but whose stories Relotius had fabricated. He also made up dialogue and quotes.
In other words, his unproven stories and composite characters were just as journalistically reliable as.....Barack Obama's much-adored memoir Dreams from My Father.
He was awarded "Journalist of the Year" honors by CNN International in 2014 for the story “Murderers as Carers” for a Swiss magazine. The story centered on the American prison system’s inability to provide care for long-term inmates suffering from dementia, but used other prisoners as caregivers. Let's hope CNN re-investigates that one.
“The report takes a poetic and interesting approach to a major social problem. Claas Relotius paints pictures in the reader’s mind that unfold like a film,’ said Franz Fischlin, chairman of the judging panel, according to a CNN article on the honor.
So how would CNN's Media Unit report this embarrassment? In Wednesday night's "Reliable Sources" newsletter, they made absolutely no mention of their own shame in this game (insert shocked face):
Major scandal at Der Spiegel
Oliver Darcy emails: The German magazine Der Spiegel said Wednesday that one of its top journalists, Claas Relotius, "falsified his articles on a grand scale and even invented characters, deceiving both readers and his colleagues."
The newsmag said the behavior was "uncovered as a result of tips, internal research, and ultimately, a comprehensive confession" by Relotius. Der Spiegel said that some of the stories in question include award-winning articles. This is a crushing announcement by the magazine... It has published more info on the case here...
WHAT EVERYONE WANTS TO KNOW: How did a reporter get away with this for so long, given Der Spiegel's famed fact-checking operation?
Actually, what everyone wants to know is: Why can't Stelter and Darcy acknowledge the CNN tie to all this? And how does this apply to the famed "Facts First" mantra?
