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Reporters accused of Fake News

December 21, 2018 | Expert Insights

Two of Europe’s leading newspapers are seeing their employees being accused of propagating fake news by writing unverifiable stories and making up claims.

Background

Fake news is a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media. The term is also at times used to cast doubt upon legitimate news from an opposing political standpoint, a tactic known as the lying press. The false information is often caused by reporters paying sources for stories, an unethical practice called “chequebook journalism”. The news is then often reverberated as misinformation in social media, but occasionally finds its way to the mainstream media as well.

Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 840,000 copies, it is the largest such publication in Europe.

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. In 2016, The Guardian's print edition had an average daily circulation of roughly 162,000 copies in the country, behind The Daily Telegraph and The Times. Since 2018 it has been published in tabloid format. The newspaper has an online UK edition as well as two international websites, Guardian Australia (founded in 2013) and Guardian US (founded in 2011).

On November 27 2018, the Guardian splashed with an eye-catching article, claiming that its journalists had seen an Ecuadorian intelligence agency document detailing that Paul Manafort and Julian Assange had met three times in the London Ecuadorian embassy, including during the run-up to the 2016 US Presidential Election.

Analysis

Europe’s two most prominent newspapers are under fire for supporting writers who made unsubstantiated claims by writing fake news stories. German news magazine Der Spiegel and British newspaper The Guardian are the latest news agencies to be accused of propagating “Fake News” through two famous but unsubstantiated claims.

German news magazine Der Spiegel has sacked an award-winning staff writer after accusing him of inventing details and quotes in numerous stories. Claas Relotius "falsified articles on a grand scale and even invented characters", Der Spiegel said.

Among the articles in question are major features that had been nominated for or won awards, the magazine added. Relotius admitted deceiving readers in some 14 stories published in Der Spiegel, the magazine said.

In a statement on Wednesday, the German publication said it was working to establish the full extent of Relotius' "fabrications" after a colleague who worked with him on a story raised suspicions about his reporting.

After initially denying the allegations, Relotius confessed last week to inventing entire passages of text in several instances, Der Spiegel says. In some articles, he is said to have included individuals he had never met or spoken to, "telling their stories or quoting them".

"By his own admission, there are at least 14 articles," the magazine said, adding: "Could that figure actually be considerably higher?"

Whereas leading journalists have also criticized the Guardian for not retracting their story that claimed Wikileaks’ Julian Assange met with ex-Donald Trump operative Paul Manafort despite a lack of evidence to support the claims.

Led by an ex-Guardian writer, now co-editor at the Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, various journalists and activists attacked the publication for going silent on the ‘bombshell’ story, while at the same time hailing that they are Britain’s most trusted news outlet.

Others queried as to the whereabouts of one of the article’s authors, Luke Harding – the Guardian’s former Moscow correspondent. Some wondered whether Harding, a constant critic of the Russian state, had been placed on “gardening leave” following the publication of his ‘exclusive.’

Greenwald, whose work with Edward Snowden led to the Guardian receiving their only Pulitzer Prize, was supported by Media Lens, an analysis website that frequently calls out the liberal publication for its pro-business biases, and historian Mark Curtis, among others.

Assessment

Our assessment is that media and news agencies are able to systematically amplify falsehood at the expense of truth. We believe that this is particularly dangerous for any form of government premised on a common public reality. We also feel that as leading news agencies in Europe, both Der Spiegel and The Guardian have a moral obligation to conduct background checks on their writers and the stories to preserve their status as news disseminators instead of news fabricators.