Tag Archives: Fake News

How could the fact-checkers have missed Der Spiegel’s fake news? About a small town in Minnesota with the stereotypical name of Fergus Falls?

Easy, when fake news that fits prejudices is what editors desire. Many a time they’ll come out of a news meeting with their bosses and say to a reporter: “This is the story I want.”

And if you’re already a star, because you invariably find the story they want, nobody’s going to nitpick you. Ain’t that right Claas Relotius?

Until Fergus Falls, the little, Trump-supporting (62.4 percent in 2016) Minnesota town you faked news about (with a phony, pistol-toting city administrator who’d supposedly never been laid), fights back.

In the pre-Internet days, Fergus Falls would never see a German news story. Them days are long gone.

Via Politico

UPDATE:  Add Theft to the misdeeds of Relotius:  “On Saturday night, the magazine announced in one of the many articles documenting Mr. Relotius’s misdeeds that the editors would be filing a criminal complaint against him after it emerged that he had set up a private donation drive ostensibly to help two Syrian orphans that he had profiled. According to Der Spiegel, only one of the two orphans exists, and the aid money went to the reporter’s private bank account.”