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Exactly my thoughts. Also, I definitely do not like the self-righteous and pompous shaming they are now doing. If you read the original German article(s!) on sp

by lqet 8y ago

Exactly my thoughts. Also, I definitely do not like the self-righteous and pompous shaming they are now doing. If you read the original German article(s!) on spiegel.de, Claas Relotius is painted as this criminal mastermind, "one of the journalistic idols of his generation" (as a German, I have never heard of him), because only a nefarious genius could've been able to do something like this the "Spiegel" and circumvent all these "great" safeguard mechanisms. They cite internal emails by him, which is just bad taste. They are even trying to introduce the term "a Relotius" as a synonym for journalistic fraud into the German language, as in: "this was a classic Relotius". It's pathetic. I cannot help getting the impression that the Spiegel employees perceive themselves as some kind of high priests of democracy, and what Relotius did was not only high treason, but blasphemy. Sure, responsible journalism is important for any healthy society, but a certain amount of fiction to make a story more coherent and enjoyable is - at least this is my perception - common practice. Additionally, as others have mentioned, calling the "Spiegel" a defender of high-quality journalism would've been true 20 years ago, but today is quite a stretch. Relotius may have massively overdone it, but come on - the guy visited a high security prison in Kurdistan to interview someone, so at least try to be fair.

danso 8y ago
I don't necessarily disagree that Der Spiegel could be more humble in its tone (I can't tell, not being able to read its indepth explanation in the original German). But I don't believe that Relotius deserves any sympathy or leeway if these allegations are true. Fabrication is a far bigger transgression than "massively overdone" it. What does visiting a high security prison in Kurdistan have to do with anything?
- lqet 8y ago
  You are right, he does not deserve sympathy, but he deserves fair treatment. I really did not like the "he did everything wrong, we are gods" tone of the Spiegel articles on the issue today, so my post above was a bit opinionated. I meant the prison visit as an example that not everything was fabricated by him. It wasn't like he sat down on a desk in Hamburg and started dreaming out interviews, at least that is my understanding (which may be wrong, of course). For example, in one case, he did Skype interviews, received a list of images made by the other party, and then, instead of describing these images, just wrote about them as a smartphone video which may not exist in reality (the article wasn't sure). In another case, he closed an interview with a description of the person praying, which was a fabrication (he admitted that) or described background music (which I thought was really strange) that was not playing in reality. In other cases, he invented background information on people he described, or minor characters in the story. I would be very surprised if you weren't able to find misconduct like this (on a smaller scale, of course) in any journalist's life work. I find it respectable that it was the Spiegel who pointed out the issue, but I am convinced that ridiculing and publicly destroying Relotius like that was a mistake and will drive a lot of readers away.
  - danso 8y ago
    I can only speak for myself, but as a relatively low-tier journalist, I can confidently say I've never fabricated anything in my reporting. I may have made errors (misspelling names/titles/etc), or ill-informed judgments (thinking someone was a better expert/source than they were). But making something up requires crossing a clear line beyond incompetence. And I would never trust the journalistic output of anyone who was found to have made up anything. Because the process of journalism is ultimately about complete trust -- no matter how many editors/fact-checkers you have, it all comes down to what the reporters themselves say they have witnessed/heard. It's already common enough to misobserve something, it's just as easy to lie about something that only you were "there" to see/her -- thus, the need to make fabrication (and plagiarism, which can be seen as a subset of fabrication) so taboo. And any reporter who justifies breaking this taboo has most certainly justified breaking rules in grayer situations -- e.g. I've never known of a fabricator to have fabricated just once. Once they get away with it the first time, what's the reason to ever stop? It's not about the "damage" to the end user, i.e. the reader. It's about the complete betrayal of professional ethics. To use a tech analogy, consider a user whose credit card number has been compromised. To the user, the damage is the same whether the info was compromised by the sysadmin's failure to prevent a trivial SQL injection attack, or if the sysadmin decided to use their admin privileges to access and share the info of that user to fuck with them. The former sysadmin can learn their lesson and be redeemed -- the latter case is someone I would most likely never trust with admin privileges.
    - pasabagi 8y ago
      I don't really understand your logic. I get that there's (sometimes) a social contract that journalists should produce factual work. However, I don't think that facts organize themselves into stories, without a degree of fabrication. Whether that fabrication is just a matter of ordering, emphasis, spin - or even elements made from new cloth seems a bit arbitrary to me.
      - justtopost 8y ago
        Maybe you need to reconsider your personal sense of ethics. This strikes me as a staunchly immoral, or at least amoral, view.
ghaff 8y ago
>a certain amount of fiction to make a story more coherent and enjoyable is - at least this is my perception - common practice For a serious newspaper, new magazine, TV news show, etc. that's purporting to report a news story absolutely not. For example, the Boston Globe has suspended or fired columnists over the years who were found to have fabricated some facts in their columns. That said, the context does matter. Certainly there's no shortage of books based on some experience of the author's that merge characters and otherwise make changes to improve the narrative flow. But these aren't presented as reporting.
- lqet 8y ago
  After reading the recent post on Medium by two Americans who tried to expose Relotius last year [1] I have to say that my formulation "may have massively overdone it" above may have been a massive understatement. [1] https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-journalist-messed-with-the-wrong-small-town-d92f3e0e01a7 https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-journalist-m...

by lqet 8y ago

danso 8y ago

I don't necessarily disagree that Der Spiegel could be more humble in its tone (I can't tell, not being able to read its indepth explanation in the original German). But I don't believe that Relotius deserves any sympathy or leeway if these allegations are true. Fabrication is a far bigger transgression than "massively overdone" it. What does visiting a high security prison in Kurdistan have to do with anything?

lqet 8y ago
You are right, he does not deserve sympathy, but he deserves fair treatment. I really did not like the "he did everything wrong, we are gods" tone of the Spiegel articles on the issue today, so my post above was a bit opinionated. I meant the prison visit as an example that not everything was fabricated by him. It wasn't like he sat down on a desk in Hamburg and started dreaming out interviews, at least that is my understanding (which may be wrong, of course). For example, in one case, he did Skype interviews, received a list of images made by the other party, and then, instead of describing these images, just wrote about them as a smartphone video which may not exist in reality (the article wasn't sure). In another case, he closed an interview with a description of the person praying, which was a fabrication (he admitted that) or described background music (which I thought was really strange) that was not playing in reality. In other cases, he invented background information on people he described, or minor characters in the story. I would be very surprised if you weren't able to find misconduct like this (on a smaller scale, of course) in any journalist's life work. I find it respectable that it was the Spiegel who pointed out the issue, but I am convinced that ridiculing and publicly destroying Relotius like that was a mistake and will drive a lot of readers away.
- danso 8y ago
  I can only speak for myself, but as a relatively low-tier journalist, I can confidently say I've never fabricated anything in my reporting. I may have made errors (misspelling names/titles/etc), or ill-informed judgments (thinking someone was a better expert/source than they were). But making something up requires crossing a clear line beyond incompetence. And I would never trust the journalistic output of anyone who was found to have made up anything. Because the process of journalism is ultimately about complete trust -- no matter how many editors/fact-checkers you have, it all comes down to what the reporters themselves say they have witnessed/heard. It's already common enough to misobserve something, it's just as easy to lie about something that only you were "there" to see/her -- thus, the need to make fabrication (and plagiarism, which can be seen as a subset of fabrication) so taboo. And any reporter who justifies breaking this taboo has most certainly justified breaking rules in grayer situations -- e.g. I've never known of a fabricator to have fabricated just once. Once they get away with it the first time, what's the reason to ever stop? It's not about the "damage" to the end user, i.e. the reader. It's about the complete betrayal of professional ethics. To use a tech analogy, consider a user whose credit card number has been compromised. To the user, the damage is the same whether the info was compromised by the sysadmin's failure to prevent a trivial SQL injection attack, or if the sysadmin decided to use their admin privileges to access and share the info of that user to fuck with them. The former sysadmin can learn their lesson and be redeemed -- the latter case is someone I would most likely never trust with admin privileges.
  - pasabagi 8y ago
    I don't really understand your logic. I get that there's (sometimes) a social contract that journalists should produce factual work. However, I don't think that facts organize themselves into stories, without a degree of fabrication. Whether that fabrication is just a matter of ordering, emphasis, spin - or even elements made from new cloth seems a bit arbitrary to me.
    - justtopost 8y ago
      Maybe you need to reconsider your personal sense of ethics. This strikes me as a staunchly immoral, or at least amoral, view.

ghaff 8y ago

>a certain amount of fiction to make a story more coherent and enjoyable is - at least this is my perception - common practice For a serious newspaper, new magazine, TV news show, etc. that's purporting to report a news story absolutely not. For example, the Boston Globe has suspended or fired columnists over the years who were found to have fabricated some facts in their columns. That said, the context does matter. Certainly there's no shortage of books based on some experience of the author's that merge characters and otherwise make changes to improve the narrative flow. But these aren't presented as reporting.

lqet 8y ago
After reading the recent post on Medium by two Americans who tried to expose Relotius last year [1] I have to say that my formulation "may have massively overdone it" above may have been a massive understatement. [1] https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-journalist-messed-with-the-wrong-small-town-d92f3e0e01a7 https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-journalist-m...