
Der Spiegel published around 60 stories from a fraudster - doener
http://www.spiegel.de/international/the-relotius-case-answers-to-the-most-important-questions-a-1244653.html
======
Tomte
The original German article is a bit too self-congratulatory for my taste.
It's basically "we've got great, ethical journalists, a fantastic
documentation department, and despite industry-leading defenses we were
defrauded by him. Oh, did we mention how great we are?".

Sure, it's good you unveiled that. But in your article you're writing yourself
how the first colleague to suspect something was stone-walled, had to fear for
his job, got no support from superiors and investigated _on his own money_.

Maybe tone it down a bit.

~~~
lqet
Exactly my thoughts. Also, I definitely do not like the self-righteous and
pompous shaming they are now doing. If you read the original German
article(s!) on spiegel.de, Claas Relotius is painted as this criminal
mastermind, "one of the journalistic idols of his generation" (as a German, I
have never heard of him), because only a nefarious genius could've been able
to do something like this the "Spiegel" and circumvent all these "great"
safeguard mechanisms. They cite internal emails by him, which is just bad
taste. They are even trying to introduce the term "a Relotius" as a synonym
for journalistic fraud into the German language, as in: "this was a classic
Relotius". It's pathetic.

I cannot help getting the impression that the Spiegel employees perceive
themselves as some kind of high priests of democracy, and what Relotius did
was not only high treason, but blasphemy. Sure, responsible journalism is
important for any healthy society, but a certain amount of fiction to make a
story more coherent and enjoyable is - at least this is my perception - common
practice. Additionally, as others have mentioned, calling the "Spiegel" a
defender of high-quality journalism would've been true 20 years ago, but today
is quite a stretch.

Relotius may have massively overdone it, but come on - the guy visited a high
security prison in Kurdistan to interview someone, so at least try to be fair.

~~~
danso
I don't necessarily disagree that Der Spiegel could be more humble in its tone
(I can't tell, not being able to read its indepth explanation in the original
German). But I don't believe that Relotius deserves any sympathy or leeway if
these allegations are true. Fabrication is a far bigger transgression than
"massively overdone" it. What does visiting a high security prison in
Kurdistan have to do with anything?

~~~
lqet
You are right, he does not deserve sympathy, but he deserves fair treatment. I
really did not like the "he did everything wrong, we are gods" tone of the
Spiegel articles on the issue today, so my post above was a bit opinionated.

I meant the prison visit as an example that not everything was fabricated by
him. It wasn't like he sat down on a desk in Hamburg and started dreaming out
interviews, at least that is my understanding (which may be wrong, of course).
For example, in one case, he did Skype interviews, received a list of images
made by the other party, and then, instead of describing these images, just
wrote about them as a smartphone video which may not exist in reality (the
article wasn't sure). In another case, he closed an interview with a
description of the person praying, which was a fabrication (he admitted that)
or described background music (which I thought was really strange) that was
not playing in reality. In other cases, he invented background information on
people he described, or minor characters in the story. I would be very
surprised if you weren't able to find misconduct like this (on a smaller
scale, of course) in any journalist's life work.

I find it respectable that it was the Spiegel who pointed out the issue, but I
am convinced that ridiculing and publicly destroying Relotius like that was a
mistake and will drive a lot of readers away.

~~~
danso
I can only speak for myself, but as a relatively low-tier journalist, I can
confidently say I've never fabricated anything in my reporting. I may have
made errors (misspelling names/titles/etc), or ill-informed judgments
(thinking someone was a better expert/source than they were). But making
something up requires crossing a clear line beyond incompetence. And I would
never trust the journalistic output of anyone who was found to have made up
anything. Because the process of journalism is ultimately about complete trust
-- no matter how many editors/fact-checkers you have, it all comes down to
what the reporters themselves say they have witnessed/heard. It's already
common enough to misobserve something, it's just as easy to lie about
something that only you were "there" to see/her -- thus, the need to make
fabrication (and plagiarism, which can be seen as a subset of fabrication) so
taboo. And any reporter who justifies breaking this taboo has most certainly
justified breaking rules in grayer situations -- e.g. I've never known of a
fabricator to have fabricated just once. Once they get away with it the first
time, what's the reason to ever stop?

It's not about the "damage" to the end user, i.e. the reader. It's about the
complete betrayal of professional ethics. To use a tech analogy, consider a
user whose credit card number has been compromised. To the user, the damage is
the same whether the info was compromised by the sysadmin's failure to prevent
a trivial SQL injection attack, or if the sysadmin decided to use their admin
privileges to access and share the info of that user to fuck with them. The
former sysadmin can learn their lesson and be redeemed -- the latter case is
someone I would most likely never trust with admin privileges.

~~~
pasabagi
I don't really understand your logic. I get that there's (sometimes) a social
contract that journalists should produce factual work. However, I don't think
that facts organize themselves into stories, without a degree of fabrication.
Whether that fabrication is just a matter of ordering, emphasis, spin - or
even elements made from new cloth seems a bit arbitrary to me.

~~~
danso
Maybe you’re understanding “fabrication” for its meaning in manufacturing —
e.g. fabricating a computer chip. In the journalism context, “fabrication” is
used to mean, “making up facts/falsehoods”.

I do agree that the way someone can spin a story can be just as misleading and
dishonest and wholesale making up facts. The practical matter is that it’s
much easier to know that someone made up certain facts maliciously. Whereas
whether something is maliciously spun vs. “telling it as it is” is harder to
define.

But if a journalist is capable of malice in the former, they most certainly do
the latter.

~~~
pasabagi
I'm broadly skeptical of the _possibility_ , even given a great deal of talent
and integrity, of accurately and objectively reporting the events of a given
day with the paucity of lead time that journalists work with. Historians take
years to develop a balanced understanding of a given event. Journalists must
do so in twenty minutes, after a morning coffee.

When you compound that with journalist's traditional role as the mouthpieces
of various political and state organs, their own personal biases, career
interests, and organized media management strategies - well, it's really a
testament to the good faith that reporters bring to the table that the news
cycle is even within spitting distance of the facts.

I don't think malice is the problem. I think the news, as an institution, was
never intended to accurately report the events, is structurally incapable of
doing so, and so, shouldn't be expected to. Hysterics over a reporter 'making
stuff up' is more a defensive thing on the part of journalists, since the
foundational conceit of the whole profession, and its defining contradiction,
is between their obvious political role, and their equally obvious reliance on
being perceived as fact-oriented.

I mean, this is Der Spiegel. It's hardly great journalism. Outsiders shouldn't
take this kind of hand-wringing too seriously.

------
AndyMcConachie
Good on Der Spiegel for bringing this into the light. This happens in
journalism and the best thing we can do is encourage this kind of truthfulness
on the part of Der Spiegel.

The last thing we want to do is punish Der Spiegel for coming out with this
information as it would only disincentivize them and other newspapers from
doing so in the future.

~~~
rv-de
I think they just realized that this will surface sooner or later anyway and
it will be very, very humiliating and embarrassing when this happens on a
rivaling outlet like sueddeutsche.de.

This guy was able to do his thing for way too long - this says a lot about how
"careful" journalism is produced there.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
Why not just assume good faith for a change? It's also more plausible: both
the guy and the publisher would have had an interest in keeping this secret,
giving the prospect far better chances than you're suggesting.

Their coverage today was also about as extensive as, say, 9/11\. They could
easily gotten ahead of it by releasing just one story, somewhere below the
fold.

They also published at noon, their busiest time of the day (people checking
the news during their break). On a Wednesday. Release it Friday or Saturday
evening (i. e. "Take out the trash day") and far fewer people will see it.

~~~
justtopost
It is literally their core job to gather data/stories, fact check and publish
things. To get one or more wrong is not inexcusable, but its close.

They published at noon because its a big story that geta them clicks, and was
crafted to put them in a better light than 'massive lack of basic oversight
and fact checking' which sounds bad, because it is.

------
simias
Only tangentially related but do we have any recent update on the situation
with Bloomberg's "backdoored motherboard" story? Last I heard Apple was
vehemently asking for them to retract the story but I haven't heard anything
after that. Have there been new developments?

Seems crazy that such an important and far reaching news story ends up...
basically just nowhere.

~~~
jlgaddis
Most recent news I'm aware of (8 days ago): _" Super Micro says review found
no malicious chips in motherboards"_ [0].

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654998)

~~~
nothis
I don't know why I should trust Super Micro investigating Super Micro.

I understand that Apple is bullish about there not being any evidence of their
current hardware being compromised but it seems to me like it doesn't prove it
never ever happened anywhere.

~~~
jlgaddis
> I don't know why I should trust Super Micro investigating Super Micro.

You don't have to.

From the _very first_ sentence of that article: _"... an outside
investigations firm had found no evidence of any malicious hardware in its
current or older-model motherboards."_

~~~
fipple
Company hired by company finds finding that will make company hire it again in
the future. Not news. Not saying the story is true ofc.

------
doener
The whole story in German: [http://m.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/fall-
claas-relotius-...](http://m.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/fall-claas-
relotius-spiegel-legt-betrug-im-eigenen-haus-offen-a-1244579.html)

I recommend DeepL for translation:

[https://www.deepl.com/](https://www.deepl.com/)

~~~
coldcode
Deepl is really decent, I checked out the English-German translation. I used
to send Google's attempts to my (born in Germany) mom for laughs.

~~~
nothis
Text auto-translation has come a long way, this is seriously impressive. It
completely re-arranges sentence structure to make it read right in English.

------
matt4077
It's too bad their main story on this isn't available in translation. It is,
ironically, one of the most thrilling stories I've read in a while.

Here are some nuggets, although I cannot do the original justice:

He fabricated impossible-to-verify "facts", such as quotes or other, often
tangential, factoids

Many times, some eerily apt song was somehow involved (playing on the radio,
sung by passing child etc). They write it's impossible to miss if you read all
his stories at once, but wasn't noticed in the normal, daily flow with
sometimes months passing between stories

He was caught by a colleague sharing a byline on the US/Mexico border. He
survived a first round of accusation by being very convincing, but the
colleague used a trip to the US to collect incriminating information that was
impossible to dismiss. There was apparently lots of scepticism of the accuser,
which they openly admit.

The SPIEGEL has 60 fact-checkers, but they have not had the mandate to search
for intentional, bad-faith acts such as this. The reasoning is(/was) that
fact-checking involves a lot of cooperation requiring trust, and that
relationship would be destroyed by a fundamentally adversarial model.

Every single fact that _can_ be checked, is. For one (weekly) issue, they
counted 1,000 edits made in this process (with about half of them being
stylistic, typos, etc.). Examples they give:

\- "<Whatevertown> is a sleepy city of 2,446, an hour outside of Memphis" =>
They check the distance on Google maps, the headcount in US government data.
They don't check the sleepiness.

They would "not investigate the journalist, but only their story". An example
for what they don't do is checking rental car bills and if they fit the places
the journalist claims to have visited (see above for reasoning)

If you want to help me do some sleuthing, I have a question: In one article,
he portraits an American woman and describes a scene where she supposedly
"locked her front door, turning the key three times". From my time in the US,
I seem to remember door locks having a mechanism somewhat different than they
have in Germany, namely one where it would not be possible (or increase
security) to make three full turns of the key. IIRC, a second turn would
actually unlock the door?

~~~
GauntletWizard
Most US locks are Schlage or kwikset (personal experience, but backed by [1])
- both require only a single turn and are direct locking - turn to the left
locks, to the right unlocks, if it's already in the position you're trying to
set it will only do a quarter turn, and the key must be in the upright
position to remove. I would be very surprised to encounter a European style
lock, but it may be that some regions prefer them (I'm in the northwest,
having previously lived in the east coast metroplex)

[1]
[http://www.locksmithsecurityservices.com/2016/06/top-5-lock-...](http://www.locksmithsecurityservices.com/2016/06/top-5-lock-
brands-united-states/)

~~~
alistairSH
My experience is the same - door deadbolts are as you describe.

Locking knobs are a bit different, in that some have a deadbolt function, but
most just lock-up the knob itself (to prevent turning). Regardless, these
aren't often used as the primary means of securing an exterior door - there's
almost always a deadbolt.

------
doener
Der Spiegel journalist messed with the wrong small

[https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-
journalist-m...](https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-journalist-
messed-with-the-wrong-small-town-d92f3e0e01a7)

~~~
lsh
I just finished reading that piece and it was really good. This (Spiegel)
author really spun the most outrageous lies.

------
masonic
Remember when the Pulitzer-winning Washington Post series "Jimmy's World"
turned out to be a fabrication?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Cooke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Cooke)

------
shadowtree
Not the first time in the German-speaking journalism world, Tom Kummer was
another famous example
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Kummer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Kummer)).

The key is that access to really great international stories is super hard for
journalists from smaller markets. They benefit though from publishing their
stuff in local language, so no one notices. I bet that there is far more of
this going on, this guy just got too big due to his awards.

Audiences in local markets thirst for bigger than life stories, in local
language. Simply translating NYT does not work.

Whenever you read articles that mimic a very literary, prosaic style I'd be
very careful. All those young journos read David Foster Wallace and Hunter S.
Thompson, plus all the great Pulitzer pieces. But, then they sit somewhere in
boring Middle-Germany and either a) write boring local stuff or b) make up
grandiose stories.

Note that this has a long tradition in Germany, starting with famous author
Karl May, who wrote legendary adventure books about the Wild West and the
Orient - while never leaving Germany
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_May](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_May)).
Those books were written in a style suggesting being travel diaries, making a
lot of readers believe in him being a real protagonist.

~~~
azinman2
German is hardly a tiny little local language. Yes it’s not English or
Chinese, but it’s big enough (as is Der Spiegel) that you can’t blame fraud on
language barriers...

~~~
matt4077
The mechanism OP posits, and which SPIEGEL actually mentions in their
reporting, is that _subjects_ would tend to ignore these stories because they
either did not notice them due to the language barrier, or did not much care
about them due to their unfamiliarity of SPIEGEL and its low importance for
the US market.

------
user2426679
The fraudster was named CNN Journalist of the Year in 2014

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/top-der-
spiege...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/top-der-spiegel-
journalist-resigns-over-fake-interviews)

------
danso
Because Der Spiegel publishes primarily in German, it was hard to even find
the articles that Relotius wrote, even though DS says the articles will remain
as-is until the conclusion of their investigation.

I did find on Twitter someone from Fergus Fall, MN, blogging a response to a
feature story by Relotius, a story purportedly about Trump's America. The list
of complaints seems quite convincing:

[https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-
journalist-m...](https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-journalist-
messed-with-the-wrong-small-town-d92f3e0e01a7)

An example of an allegedly-fabricated fact:

> _Perhaps the oddest fiction in a list of many is Relotius’ depiction of
> Bremseth as someone who “would like to marry soon…but he has not yet been in
> a serious relationship with a woman. He has also never been to the ocean.”_

> _We can attest that Bremseth has indeed been to the ocean, by his account,
> “many times” and is currently happily involved in a multi-year,
> cohabitational relationship with a woman named Amanda. In fact, here’s a
> picture of the two of them in front of, all things, an ocean._

~~~
netsharc
Wow, reading their debunking, what that journalist did is fucking disgusting.
The Spiegel article mentions the whole office is in shock, I can imagine, it's
probably like realizing your wonderful spouse has been having an affair for
the last 10 years.

It makes me think of this lady's TED talk,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg),
and how that journalist [wait why am I referring to him as a journalist, he's
a fraudster], how that fraudster is just making up his own story and
presenting it as the truth, painting a an imaginary world for his readers'
minds which they would accept as reality.

Sadly that's what lazy journalism and fake newsmakers do as well, so much that
some people are convinced of the existence of FEMA death squads and a child
porn ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant...

~~~
danso
I'm definitely someone of low ambition and likely low imagination, but I've
never understood the desire as a journalist to fabricate when, as the saying
goes, truth is stranger than fiction. For the sake of argument, let's assume
that places like Fergus Falls, MN, are actually representative of the
communities responsible for Trump's victory, and that Trump's victory, to the
Der Spiegel readership, is a "bad thing".

The obvious "duh" narrative is that everyone in Fergus Fall is a multiple-gun-
toting, sex-repressed hillbilly who wouldn't know the difference between or
even the existence of Germany and Russia. Such a caricature is more
"viral"/tweetable. But if you as a journalist wanted to raise the alarm about
the rise of Trumpism, the far more disturbing story would be one depicting
Fergus Falls as the "normal" and non-extreme place that it ostensibly is.
Because that would imply the scenario of the "good German", where people are
uncaring of the purported evil until it's too late.

That the Der Spiegel reporter went for fabricating schlock is, to me,
indicative not just of his total lack of ethics, but also shallowness of
thought, though maybe the two things are highly correlated.

~~~
netsharc
Indeed, indeed. This reporter also spent time in a midwestern town, his report
painted a better picture:
[https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2016/nov/16/how-
trump...](https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2016/nov/16/how-trump-took-
middletown-muncie-election)

The caricature in everyone's mind is also dangerous, a lot of Trump "haters"
probably just think the average Trump voter is a racist, gun-toting hillbilly.
They don't want to further consider e.g. why people who voted for Obama would
switch to vote for Trump.

And how many people's image of "Muslim refugee" is immediately "ISIS fighter"?

The same thing is happening with the rise of the populist right in Europe,
these are people feeling economically insecure about the future (thanks to,
among other things, Merkel's austerity policies as the de-facto leader of
Europe), they're confused, the right is exploiting this fear to get them mad,
and the left don't bother listening to them and dismiss them as racists, and
think the answer is posters promoting tolerance...

------
gadders
Sounds like Johan Hari in the UK:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari)

~~~
scandox
And Jayson Blair in the US

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair)

~~~
sftwds
And Stephen Glass:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass)

A very good film _Shattered Glass_ was made about it.

~~~
danso
Stephen Glass seems like the better comparison. Jayson Blair was definitely a
massive and traumatic blow to the NYT, which called it a "low point in the
152-year history of the newspaper" [0]. But his fabrications, numerous as they
were, were relatively picayune, and he was still a cub reporter career-wise.
Der Spiegel's reporter, in contrast, seems to have had international accolades
and was promoted to editor-status, and was trusted to write important/dramatic
features concerning international affairs. Similar to Stephen Glass, which is
why "Shattered Glass" was so entertaining.

Not that Blair's misdeeds didn't deserve the same punishment and gnashing of
teeth by the NYT -- any fabrication deserves the career death penalty IMHO.
But he was caught on his way to becoming someone of Glass's stature. What I
remember most about the NYT's investigation/reflection into Blair was how he
made up quotes/details regarding real-life people -- and how none of those
people apparently complained (loudly enough) to the NYT. Apparently, they
thought it was just par for course, which is a hugely damning and depressing
indictment of journalism at large:

> _In an article on March 27 that carried a dateline from Palestine, W.Va.,
> Mr. Blair wrote that Private Lynch 's father, Gregory Lynch Sr., ''choked up
> as he stood on his porch here overlooking the tobacco fields and cattle
> pastures.'' The porch overlooks no such thing._

> _He also wrote that Private Lynch 's family had a long history of military
> service; it does not, family members said. He wrote that their home was on a
> hilltop; it is in a valley. And he wrote that Ms. Lynch's brother was in the
> West Virginia National Guard; he is in the Army._

> _The article astonished the Lynch family and friends, said Brandi Lynch,
> Jessica 's sister. ''We were joking about the tobacco fields and the
> cattle.'' Asked why no one in the family called to complain about the many
> errors, she said, ''We just figured it was going to be a one-time thing.''_

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-
record-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-
reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html)

------
oaiey
And it came out by a US border militia report. I count the hours till it will
be picked up by the US political system. DER SPIEGEL is not exactly a
conservative magazine.

~~~
ajmurmann
Pretty much nothing in Germany is conservative by US standards.

~~~
doener
The AfD is our „Trump party.“

~~~
ajmurmann
They are. But even they wouldn't ban abortion, charge for universities or
massively cut down on social welfare or allow anyone to buy assault rifles,
right?

~~~
_ph_
Actually they argued e.g. for removing the unemployment insureance.

------
ElijahLynn
Good on them for being transparent about this. They could have handled that in
a much more secretive way.

------
bomanbot
Most of the articles about it are in German, but the Spiegel published an
article answering the most important questions in English as well:

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/the-relotius-case-
answer...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/the-relotius-case-answers-to-
the-most-important-questions-a-1244653.html)

~~~
yorwba
That's TFA.

~~~
all2
What is 'TFA'?

~~~
tivert
TFA = The F*cking Article

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TFA](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TFA)

