Tag Archives: Lying Press

The Scandal Nobody Wants To Talk About

December 9, 2019 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humility, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Because it reveals the Media Brain Police for who they are.

Relotius

Granted, this guy was a real artist but can you imagine the armies of lesser charlatans out there who furnish us with our news each and every day? No media bias or fake news here, right?

The furore surrounding Der Spiegel journalist Claas Relotius is back, with a book by the colleague who exposed him –

Fiction and non-fiction can feed off each other in unusual ways. In the winter of 2018, Germany was shaken by the biggest media scandal since the forged Hitler diaries, after it emerged that the country’s bastion of investigative journalism – DER SPIEGEL – had published stories by a reporter who had “fictionalised” his prize-winning articles with armies of invented characters. Now the “Relotius scandal” has gone into its second round, with the publication of a non-fiction book by the journalist who exposed his fraudulent colleague: a detective story about the search for truth in the era of fake news that makes a more gripping read than most novelists could have managed…

Before he was exposed, he had won the top prize for German reporters, the Reporterpreis, four times in six years. One judge praised his stories as jumping off the page “almost like literature”. He was in line for a promotion at Der Spiegel.

If You Didn’t Read It Here It Didn’t Happen

November 1, 2019 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Go Neues Deutschland. There are not a lot of East Berlin newspapers out there that have the backbone to call the fall of the Berlin Wall fake news.

ND

Communist newspapers? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?

Wolfgang Hübner returns from the archives of the Neues Deutschland newspaper clutching a rare treasure: a thick binder containing one of the biggest misses in journalistic history.

Mr Hübner has unearthed the edition of Friday, November 10 1989, the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is the most consequential moment of the decade, yet that day’s ND — the official organ of the Socialist party of East Germany, boasting a circulation of more than 1m — contains not a word on the event.

“Lots of traffic at the border crossing.”

Never Report A Suspect’s Nationality

July 30, 2019 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Especially if he doesn’t have the “correct” one.

Suspect

After Frankfurt tragedy, should German media report a suspect’s nationality? The tragedy in Frankfurt will have serious consequences for an already-tense societal debate in Germany. That’s why it’s so important that the media report the truth completely.

A horrific event in Frankfurt on Monday has Germany in shock: At one of the country’s largest railway stations, an 8-year-old boy and his mother were thrown in front of an oncoming express train. The child was killed; the mother survived.

The suspect attempted to flee the scene but he was detained by onlookers and arrested. A few hours later, a police spokeswoman stated that the suspect was 40 years old and was not believed to have known the victims. It was also revealed that he comes from Eritrea.

Illustrious? At Risk?

June 18, 2019 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hype, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

What Germany are these journalists writing about?

Merkel

Merkel’s illustrious reign is at risk of being tarnished. Huh?

That nobody really much cares about or follows what is going on in Germany is one thing but to start churning out science fiction about a parallel German universe is simply irresponsible.

There is nothing “illustrious” about Angela Merkel’s “reign” and there is absolutely, positively no risk that it could become tarnished. It already is tarnished. It can’t get more tarnished than it already is, in fact. Ask any German on the street and he/she will tell you. The journalists at CNBC ought to consider giving that a try.

Sakrileg, the German word for sacrilege: the violation or misuse of what is regarded as sacred. I’m about to go there. Has German Chancellor Angela Merkel been a disaster for Europe, and is her prolonged tenure at the Federal Chancellery extending the region’s problems rather than holding them back?

German Of The Day: Umerziehen

February 19, 2019 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hostility, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

That means re-educate.

Umerziehen

And that’s what the “framing” expert at Germany state TV “Channel One” (ARD) has advised its employees to do. Viewers are in dire need of re-education.

Her secret “framing manual” indicates that the ARD is at war with its critics and private television channels alike, disruptive elements who refer to the ARD as “state TV,” criticize “compulsory fees” (they’re not compulsory, they’re a show of solidarity!) and “question the ARD’s relevance.” Gee, I guess she means me, too.

These disruptive elements don’t understand that the ARD is “guided by moral principles” and its own “moral necessity for social interaction” and not, like them, motivated by profit. The ARD doesn’t have to be motivated by profit, people. All Germans get taxed for this state supported media bias whether they’re viewers or not.

Isn’t that a nice smirk? Big Sister is watching. She wants you all to keep on watching, that is.

Die Arbeit der ARD, so heißt es, sei „von moralischen Prinzipien getragen“, überzeugt von der eigenen „moralischen Notwendigkeit für das gesellschaftliche Miteinander“ – während die „medienkapitalistischen Heuschrecken“ des Privat-TV nur dem Profit dienen würden.

The Money Was Real, Though

December 24, 2018 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hard Facts, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Fake news reporters may fake their news like there’s no tomorrow but they rarely want anything to do with fake money.

Fake

Der Spiegel said Sunday it would file a criminal complaint against a disgraced reporter after it emerged he may have embezzled donations intended for Syrian street children.

Claas Relotius, 33, resigned this month after admitting to making up stories and inventing protagonists in more than a dozen articles in the magazine’s print and online editions.

Spiegel said it now had information that Relotius allegedly launched a campaign for readers to give money to help subjects of an article he wrote but that the bank details he gave directed the funds to his own account.

Spiegel said concerned readers had in recent days reported Relotius’ call for donations purportedly for orphaned Syrian children living on the streets of Turkey.

“Der Spiegel will give all the information it collects to public prosecutors as part of a criminal complaint.”

PS: And on that happy note, Merry Christmas!

Santa

Institutional Bias?

December 23, 2018 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

At Der Spiegel? At CNN? And systematically practiced by practically everybody else out there working in the media’s “mediation” machine?

CNN

No way. Or… Way? Wow. Who would have thought that possible?

The US government has waded into the scandal of the German journalist for Der Spiegel magazine who faked stories on a grand scale over years, calling it proof of “institutional bias” in the media against America.

In a scathing letter to the magazine’s editors, Richard Grenell, US ambassador to Germany, claims the journalism of Claas Relotius, who resigned from the German news magazine last week, was symptomatic of anti-American bias across the mainstream media. “It is clear that we were the victims of a campaign of institutional bias,” Grenell wrote to Der Spiegel, in a letter also seen by the daily newspaper Bild. He said he was aghast at the way “anti-American coverage” had been facilitated by the magazine.

“We are aware that the Relotius case makes the fight against fake news that much more difficult. For everyone. For for other media outlets that are on our side and for citizens and politicians who are interested in an accurate portrayal of reality.”

German Fake News Scandal Reaches Fergus Falls, Minnesota

December 21, 2018 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“Reality is in the business of killing off fiction.”

Fake News

“In 7,300 words he really only got our town’s population and average annual temperature correct, and a few other basic things, like the names of businesses and public figures, things that a child could figure out in a Google search. The rest is uninhibited fiction (even as sloppy as citing an incorrect figure of citywide 70.4% electoral support for Trump, when the actual number was 62.6%), which begs the question of why Der Spiegel even invested in Relotius’ three week trip to the U.S., whether they should demand their money back from him, and what kind of institutional breakdown led to the supposedly world-class Der Spiegel fact-checking team completely dropping the ball on this one.”

If It’s Not In Der Spiegel, It Didn’t Happen

December 20, 2018 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Unfortunately, that’s also the case even when it is in Der Spiegel.

Spiegel

And here y’all thought that fake news was fake.

Award-winning journalist Claas Relotius wrote fake news, German magazine Der Spiegel says.

An award-winning journalist who worked for Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s leading news outlets, has left the weekly magazine after evidence emerged that he committed journalistic fraud “on a grand scale” over a number of years, the publication said Wednesday…

Spiegel’s revelations echoed past instances of journalistic fraud by reporters elsewhere, including Jayson Blair of The New York Times, Christopher Newton of The Associated Press and Janet Cooke, whose 1980 piece about a child addicted to heroin won The Washington Post writer a Pulitzer Prize before it was exposed as untrue.

Er hat nach Meinung der Jury des Deutschen Reporterpreises 2018 wieder die beste Reportage des Jahres geschrieben, über einen syrischen Jungen diesmal, der im Glauben lebt, durch einen Kinderstreich den Bürgerkrieg im Land mit ausgelöst zu haben. Die Juroren würdigen einen Text “von beispielloser Leichtigkeit, Dichte und Relevanz, der nie offenlässt, auf welchen Quellen er basiert.”