Of course, you have already forgotten that before the stupid expression of fake news was the good old expression “newspaper duck”. If only because not only news, but entire reports and investigations can be invented.
In fact, we are witnessing the "uncovering" of the whole system of the left-liberal propaganda machine of Germany, and it is called "the case of Claas Relotius."
There is such a new star of German journalism - 33-year-old Klaas Relotius, who in recent years has collected all possible journalistic awards and prizes both at home and abroad: for example, he became a journalist of the year according to CNN (along with Arkady Babchenko and Tanya Felgengauer from "Echo of Moscow"). His fame reached Capitol Hill. He wrote reports from hot spots in the Middle East, where the bloody Assad does not allow Syrian children to live, he wrote reports from the borders of the United States and Mexico, where gangs of ultra-right rednecks shoot at the poor refugees at night. He wrote touching stories about how Syrian orphans live in terrible Turkish camps. He even wrote about how he still managed to pull the Syrian kids to Germany and was adopted by the family of a German doctor.
He received recognition and professional awards for about 40 publications in Spiegel (“The Mirror”) and a little more in the Welt, Cicero, Zürcher Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung and so on.
It all started when the co-author of the report on the report from the Mexican border (“The Hunters Border”), who wrote his part on the other side of the Mexican border, expressed disbelief on the colorful story of Relotius, as he took root in a gang of right-wing redneks, who only and waiting, as if to shoot at the Mexicans from his jeep. The Mexican co-author began to spread rot at the editorial office - how dare he slander the torch of European journalism "and in general, who are you." For two months he was called a slanderer and scum, but the peasant rested because he did not want a real professional shame for himself.
Just in case, they checked Relotius' editorial mail and realized that the correspondence with the “contact person” was falsified by him. And it began. And then the Turk-photographer from Magnum, who worked with him on a report from a refugee camp in Turkey, arrived in time and said that the touching story that housewives of Hamburg and Munich sobbed about their brother and sister from Syria who lost their mother is a star reporter invented - starting with the fact that not a brother and sister, and the mother of one of them quietly working in her own shop. The Welt edition, just in case, also checked the touching story that he sold to them, and it also turned out to be bullshit. Moreover, it turned out that he practically sold the same note word for word to another publication - the Zürcher Zeitung, which by any professional measure is a complete taboo in any country.
Spiegel published a huge material about how they were "deceived by crook Relotius", and all awards were taken away from him. And then it turned out that under the tearful story about Syrian orphans, Klaas Relotius instituted a collection of money from readers to his personal account. How much money he collected and where they all went, no one knows.
Now the Spiegel editors have agreed to the point that, probably, he is insane. But readers are somewhat interested in something else - how for years the entire editorial machine systematically printed dozens of falsified reports and articles to the press, where all these people from the inspection service, editors, department heads, and so on, looked. There are dozens of people with huge salaries and special journalistic tax breaks.
The answer is simple: he wrote what they needed. He did not write about the fact that there were no Nazi marches, as well as "hunting for foreigners" in Chemnitz. For such a note, he would be quickly kicked out not only from the editorial office, but also from the city. After all, it was for voicing this information that the head of the German intelligence was dismissed and they did not choke. Because it contradicted the “party line”. And then everything is as it should be: the bloody Assad, the Russian bombs in Aleppo, the unfortunate orphans in the hellish Turkish camps, the extreme right-wing trampists of America — everything as the editorial board demands.
Spiegel is now trying to present everything as a “single case with an insane”, to which the German audience is already beginning to laugh out loud, because it is with these words that each case of a terrorist or criminal attack by refugees in Germany is described: “an isolated case”, “insane”. But the picture is clear not only to the Germans.
US Ambassador Richard Grenell criticized Spiegel in connection with the Klaas Relotius case and expressed "concern" that Spiegel management "is forcing this type of material, and the reporters are clearly doing what the management wants." He accuses Spiegel of anti-Americanism, arguing that journalists and editors “regularly publish information and messages that would not be so deceitful if the facts were verified primarily with the help of the US Embassy”: unfortunately, Spiegel journalists “do not even call” there before you write. Grenell, of course, is ridiculous - well, who among the journalists will be asked at the embassy? But in general, he understood everything correctly: what the editorial board wants to receive, then she is being carried.
The problem is that the reader in Germany is a smarter and more decent writer, and this can be seen from the comments on the articles. In those publications where there are still comments in general, because Spiegel is so afraid and does not trust his audience that they simply do not have such a function. But, for example, in the Welt, “kamenty” is more interesting than editorial texts, and there when discussing Klaas's ducks that are beating at the heart of local journalism, people write about “the collapse of left-green propaganda”. “That is, they want to say that before Relothius in Spiegel there was a true truth?” And they remember that the dirty day about “extremists in Chemnitz” the day after the demonstrations of the inhabitants of this city was launched by Spiegel. “I don’t think this is an isolated case, it was made by the professional environment,” writes one reader. “I am very suspicious of all these sentimental photos about refugees - women and children - on boats in the Mediterranean Sea,” comments another.
But Relotius himself was able to say only one answer: “Yes, I am sick, but you also liked what I was writing.” In my opinion, a very talented guy - to nail the system in one sentence.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.