Flutterby™! : Claas Relotius

Shadow forwarded along a couple of links about what seems to be the news of the day, and I 've added a few more: Der Spiegel journalist messed with the wrong small town:

There are so many lies here, that my friend Jake and I had to narrow them down to top 11 most absurd lies (we couldn’t do just 10) for the purpose of this article. We’ve been working on it since the article came out in spring of 2017, but had to set it aside to attend to our lives (raising a family, managing a nonprofit organization, etc.) before coming back to it this fall, and finally wrapped things up a few weeks ago, just in time to hear today that Relotius was fired when he was exposed for fabricating many of his articles.

Germany's Der Spiegel says star reporter Claas Relotius wrote fake stories 'on a grand scale':

Several major features Relotius wrote for Der Spiegel that were also nominated for or won journalism awards are now under scrutiny, according to the magazine.

When the news really is fake: German reporter admits fabricating coverage at leading news magazine:

But at a time when political parties are deeply polarized on both sides of the Atlantic, the Spiegel controversy could also bolster those who now regularly portray reporting as “fake news.” As a publication that often allows its reporters to include subjective observations in their stories, Spiegel’s anti-Trump cover pieces had been widely shared in liberal circles in recent years. The fact that Relotius was initially exposed because of a story from the United States was immediately used to discredit the magazine’s wider coverage.

Among them, "The Last Witness," about an American who allegedly travels to an execution as a witness, "Lion Children," about two Iraqi children who have been kidnapped and reeducated by the Islamic State, and "Number 440," a feature about alleged prisoners at the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Writer touted by CNN as 'Journalist of the Year' forced to resign for fabricating stories

The Relotius case resembles past instances where journalists have been caught fabricating stories. Those accused previously have included Stephen Glass, who was fired from the New Republic magazine, Jayson Blair, fired from the New York Times, and Janet Cooke, a Washington Post reporter whose story about a child addicted to heroin won a Pulitzer Prize before it was revealed to be a fabrication.