Journalist Admits Writing False News Stories

Europe faces its largest journalistic scandal in years after Der Spiegel, the continent’s biggest-selling news magazine, said one of its star reporters fabricated facts in his articles for years, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Claas Relotius

The magazine’s disclosure, which came after a colleague raised concerns about a recent piece on supporters of President Trump in rural America, was made as Europe’s established media faces attacks by populist forces at home and abroad.

Claas Relotius, an award-winning journalist, resigned from the magazine last week after admitting to making up parts of his reporting in the past decade, Der Spiegel said late Wednesday.

According to the magazine, Mr. Relotius, 33, invented characters, dialogue and events in his coverage of subjects ranging from a Guantanamo inmate who no longer wanted to leave the prison to civil war orphans in Syria.

In seven years writing for Der Spiegel, Mr. Relotius became one of Germany’s most highly regarded journalists, accumulating 10 coveted awards. In 2014, CNN named Relotius the Journalist of the Year and Print Journalist of the Year. The awards were for German-language journalism and decided by an independent jury. The last awards were given in 2015, CNN reported.

But in a separate video interview on the magazine’s website, a colleague said he raised an alarm in November about some facts in an article he and Mr. Relotius co-authored about a pro-Trump militia, which the article described as hunting down immigrants along Arizona’s border with Mexico.

On Wednesday, the magazine launched what it called a transparency campaign, pledging to investigate Mr. Relotius’ entire body of work and publicize the results. It said it had so far found made-up facts in 14 out of nearly 60 articles.