It’s doubtful Spiegel whether will ever recover its credibility now that it was revealed one of its star reporters had been fabricating stories for years.
The extent of the news fabrication is no better illustrated than in the case of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, where now disgraced journalist Claas Relotius invented stories with the aim of viciously smearing rural American Trump voters as contemptible, small-minded, gun-toting, right-wing religious rednecks. And, sadly, most Spiegel readers lapped it up.
The Spiegel piece on Fergus Falls, like so many others, was a fictional wonder. Yet, Fergus Falls fought back as Medium.com writers Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn wrote how there were “so many lies” that they “had to narrow them down to top 11 most absurd lies” and that even “a child could figure out in a Google search.”
How could this have gotten by Spiegel editors?
Now the leftist German weekly finds itself in a fight for its life and is desperately scrambling to control the rapidly spreading damage. The strategy so far appears to be to make Relotius look as if he was just an isolated renegade within an organization of otherwise highly professional and objective media outlet, and now Spiegel is moving quickly and decisively!
“Racist anti-Americanism” …”cliche-filled stories”
But this is just not credible. Relotius is only the tip of the fake news iceberg.
The fabricated stories by Relotius went on for years and involved dozens of major articles. The problem at Spiegel is not just a single journalist getting out of line, but rather the German weekly having a long history of delivering one-sided, distorted activist news reports. It’s been in the Spiegel genome for years.
Relotius is only the tip of the overall sentiment in a leftist newsroom that has long despised the American conservative heartland. The shooting star journalist was merely a reflection of Spiegel’s institutionalized, overzealous anti-Americanism.
Medium.com reader Hula Ink commented:
Spiegel is known for its strong, nationalist, even racist Anti-Americanism — cliche-filled derogatory stories about America are not unusual in its pages.
It’s not a surprise that this guy got away with lying about everything (not only his America articles) — he told Spiegel editors exactly what appealed to them.”
Another NTZ PhD reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, sent a comment by e-mail:
How on earth did Relotius think he was going to get away with this stuff? Truth is, prior to the Internet, he probably would have, given that few if any of the town’s residents would have seen the article, which flatters the prejudices of liberal Europeans, and if they had seen it, who would have heard their protest?”
German mainstream media no better than Spiegel
More sad is that Spiegel is in reality no better or worse than most major German and European news outlets, who have long ago declared open-season on conservative American values.
Though most avoid outright fabrication of malicious stories, they are fully engaged in one-sided journalism and half-truths with the aim of cultivating anti-conservative America sentiment.
Climate science skeptics censored
No issue exposes this more than climate science and policy. For example, both the BBC and LA Times have declared not to provide a forum to climate skeptics. The German mainstream media routinely characterize and insult climate science skeptics as ignorant “deniers” from the rightwing fringes.
Climate denial mafia
One egregious example of half-truth journalism was Die Zeit’s 2012 feature story on climate science skepticism dubbed: “The Climate Warriors, How industry paid PR managers for years have convinced the world that global warming is not taking place. The chronology of organized lies” by Anita Blasberg and Kerstin Kohlenberg.
In this one-sided hit piece, Blasberg and Kohlenberg relied solely on carefully selected “facts” to tailor a narrative that the climate denial movement was orchestrated by climate Godfather Marc Morano and Big Oil. The authors won awards for their “investigative” piece.
Critics of Spiegel are just as bad
Even the critics of the latest Spiegel affair can’t help but to resort to half truths and falsehoods on the airwaves. Yesterday morning, for instance, NDR public radio interviewed a media professor who complained that the fabricated Spiegel stories “played right into the hands” of climate skeptics, who, he said, “deny climate change”.
The fact however is that 1) climate science skeptics don’t deny climate change, 2) they agree that man has an impact on climate, but in a more modest way and 3) skeptics don’t believe it is a crisis to humanity.
In short, skeptics just don’t buy into the mass hysteria.
And the German media wonder why they have been labeled by many as the “Lügenpresse“.
“It’s doubtful Spiegel whether will ever recover…”
Shouldn’t that read…
“It’s doubtful whether Spiegel will ever recover…”
Or perhaps a more radical rewrite to point out that “Der Spiegel” didn’t actually have any credibility to recover anyway.
Yeah, or that. ….maybe mostly that.
I guess I am not surprised to hear they support one side of a story. Even thou it may be wrong. I was hoping media was past the idea of publish or perish, but wanted the “facts”, and called b.s. when needed. Such as the global warming story. We only get half of the story, the half that says danger. But we are just off a greater danger, recovering from world glaciation. Corn and wheat do not grow on ice. And ice extended to the mid west, most of Europe, down the steppes, to Asia. And up to the mid latitudes of the south. Not good if you like beaches and bikinis. I do not get their perspective, I say thank God for global warming.
@Jim
Yes.
Of course we can’t cool the earth, but if we could it would be incredibly foolish. What we can do, and are doing by pretending to fight the AGW monster, is to squander our wealth so we are unprepared for the real threat when it appears.
You might find this an interesting read.
https://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/next-ice-age/
He was CNN’s “Reporter Of The Year” for 2014.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/12/figures-cnn-reporter-of-the-year-and-der-spiegel-hack-journalist-fabricated-his-stories-for-years-known-for-trashing-trump-supporters/
Birds of a feather flock together, after all.
They just can’t help themselves. The lies start small but over time they just keep expanding. The journalists read the other journalists and accept their lies as truths so it builds a false world view that they never question.
The Left and lies. Joined at the hip.
Now who would have thought?……
But wait. It gets worse.
He’s also a crook.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/12/it-gets-better-cnns-reporter-of-the-year-claas-relotius-embezzled-donations-away-from-syrian-street-children/
…joined at the hip there too, they are.
Rural America are much safer to live in which has far less crime and murders per capita, and where Republicans are the decisive majority.
Big cities of America are often dominated by Democrats, which is also where the vast majority of crime and murders per capita occurs in.
Thus this so called journalist is a bald faced liar!
The old press is as corrupt as the politicians they “cover”. Real journalism has no place in their institutions anymore. The only way to take them on effectively is to start digging into their personal lives and reporting on them the way they do to others when they wish to destroy them. After all most of them do meet the legal definition of a public person.
Don’t forget those WDR “journalists” from almost 3 years ago:
WDR journalist: “Of course we are instructed to report pro government”
https://www.epochtimes.de/politik/deutschland/wdr-journalistin-wir-sind-natuerlich-angewiesen-pro-regierung-zu-berichten-a1300001.html#
There have been rumours for years that the TV news people generate news by what is called donating. Organising 10 to 20 people around the camera team and getting them to throw missiles.
It’s easy to make stuff up, fake facts are fun.
You gotta love it when “contemptible, small-minded, gun-toting, right-wing religious rednecks” vote for a philanderer who is a serial monogamist and also a former Democrat who donated money to Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump is no Republican and never will be.
One more time: contemptible, small-minded, gun-toting, right-wing religious rednecks.
Got it. Would it be better to be an ignorant climate change denier? One or the other, some smarmy writer will make it so, it can be all fake, doesn’t matter.
Those folks in the news bidness know how to tell a good story, fake news is really cool. I read a fake news story some time ago that reported Charles Manson had died on May 15, 2015, he didn’t, but I believed it until the real news became known that he didn’t die, somebody made it all up. Fake news. He has died since then. Good riddance.
All of the rural contemptible, small-minded, gun-toting, right-wing religious rednecks that I know are basically good people, they aren’t really contemptible, small-minded, gun-toting, right-wing religious rednecks being depicted by stupid idiots who think they even have a brain simply because they have an argot that works for them. They can write it all down for the gullible to read about contemptible, small-minded, gun-toting, right-wing religious rednecks. You have to make sure the uninformed, low information gullible dupes are informed, fake facts can do that. Too funny.
Not too surprising to run into that any day of the week, they’re clueless, have no idea what the contemptible, small-minded, gun-toting, right-wing religious rednecks are doing each day to become contemptible, small-minded, gun-toting, right-wing religious rednecks, which they aren’t, but it is good to believe the misperception, keeps away the stupid idiots who think they have brains, however, they haven’t a single cell of brain matter inside their empty heads.
Thick skulls referred to as boneheads more often than not. No brains whatsoever, all bone, nothing else. No brains, no headaches. har
See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.
Those so-called contemptible, small-minded, gun-toting, right-wing religious rednecks raise enough food so stupid idiots who think they have brains can eat and not starve.
The brainless fools like the Spiegel writer also need to get a clue. Now they are laughing stock. lol
The contemptible, small-minded, gun-controlling, left-wing atheists who write it all down, writ large, scriveners, don’t mind making life miserable for everybody except for themselves. Looking at it all, apparently that is what they enjoy doing.
More or less imposing their will.
You have to distance yourself from such nonsense.
It takes a country mile and even more.
So, yah, see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.
“Der Spiegel’s “Fabricated News” Scandal Shakes Western Mainstream Journalism To The Core“
Translation: “Our cover is blown!”
Not that we didn’t already know, but perhaps some of them weren’t aware that we knew, and now there’s little if any doubt?
[…] https://notrickszone.com/2018/12/21/der-spiegel-relotius-fabricated-news-scandal-shakes-western-mains… […]