THE FAKE NEWS EMPIRE.
The 'Der Spiegel' Scandal: Stop the Press, It's All a Lie.
Ana Carbajosa
17 FEB 2019 - 02:47 CST
Claas Relotius, illustrious editor of the prestigious weekly Der Spiegel, was a scammer. His published texts now carry a note warning that they may be fictitious. He was unmasked by Juan Moreno, a contributor to the publication.
This is the story of the last great journalistic fraud in the era of fake news.
No one believed him. Nor did he himself imagine that he would end up uncovering the great journalistic scandal that has shaken the foundations of the German press and that is giving rise to a new debate - the umpteenth - about the profession around the world.
Now, Juan Moreno is believed and in Germany he is considered little less than a hero. But in order to unmask a large-scale lying professional capable of deceiving an entire country, Moreno had to suffer a real ordeal.
He fought to convince his bosses that he, the weakest link in the labour chain, was right and that Claas Relotius, 33, the star of German journalism, invented the stories he published. It wasn't easy, but it was one of those rare occasions when David ended up beating Goliath. Moreno, a Spanish journalist raised in Germany, took a chance and won.
His victory, however, is tremendously bittersweet. His success is also the misfortune of Der Spiegel, the legendary German publication for which Moreno works as a collaborator.
It is difficult to understand how the prestigious magazine could raise a reporter who invented stories, who claimed to have interviewed people he never saw and visited places he never set foot in. Like no one else, not his bosses, not the data checking department, not a single colleague, realized that the more than fifty articles his star journalist had written were too perfect to be true; they were actually fraud.
Moreno arrives almost an hour late for his appointment at his flat, located north of Berlin. He has just testified in Der Spiegel's commission of inquiry. His wife, also a freelance journalist, ends an article on a laptop on the kitchen table.
Three of his four daughters go in and out during the three long hours of the meeting.
"It was a horrible five weeks. I knew something wasn't right, but they didn't believe me.
"I am no hero, nor the great defender of the truth. I didn't have another one. I have four daughters and for a moment I saw myself on the street because my name appeared in an article full of errors," he says. "It was a horrible five weeks.
I knew something wasn't right, but they didn't believe me. The frustration was total. She assures that she spent weeks almost without sleeping, that she has lost eight kilos and that her soul almost fell to her feet the day her two and a half year old daughter clearly pronounced a name: Claas Relotius.
"I would get up and sleep with that name in my mouth.
The everyday life of Moreno's home was blown up at the beginning of last November, following the preparation of a report titled "La frontera de Jaeger" (Jaeger's Border).
The reporter was in Mexico, covering the caravan of migrants, when the magazine called him and told him that he was going to write a joint report with Relotius, the great pen of the publication. Moreno would accompany a migrant to the border and tell the story, and in the United States Relotius would be embedded in a group of civilian militiamen willing to stop the arrival of migrants.
Moreno was not enthusiastic about the idea. He didn't know Relotius, but once he had read a text of his about a Cuban tax advisor who had squeaked at him. The work was done. Moreno received the half-signed text and detected details that didn't fit him. He wrote to the data and documentation verification department, where some 60 people work. They ignored him.
Afterwards, Relotius sent him a new draft in which a new final scene appeared, in which a militiaman shot at something that moved, insinuating that it was a migrant. That passage did not appear in the first version. "It is impossible for a good journalist to witness such a scene and not include it from the first moment," he thought.
[Cover of the issue of 'Der Spiegel' in which the fraud is related. The headline is a phrase from the magazine's founder: "Tell what you are". To the right, Claas Relotius, the day he picked up a CNN award for his work.]
From there, Moreno began a desperate fight for the truth that would steal his dream and plunge him into a frenetic investigation against the clock to save his skin and his name, which irremediably ended up appearing under the false report. He discovered an article published in the American press that looks suspiciously like that of Relotius.
There was also a militiaman named Jaeger, but there were details of the characters that did not match. Later, Moreno recognized in one of the photos published by "Der Spiegel" and bought from "The New York Times" Tim Foley, a militiaman he had seen in an award-winning documentary. He was famous, but Relotius hadn't named him and said he wouldn't let him be photographed and that's why the photos were bought from The New York Times. Translated with
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Nadie le creyó. Él mismo tampoco imaginó que acabaría destapando el gran escándalo periodístico que ha sacudido los cimientos de la prensa alemana y q
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