Award Winning Journalist admits to writing Fake News

[supersonicwaffle]

@notimp this may be interesting to you

Journalismus im Neutralitätswahn - Warum wir endlich damit auhören sollten, nur abbilden zu wollen, "was ist". Mein Plädoyer für einen werteorientierten Journalismus in der aktuellen Ausgabe von "WDR Print".
@WDR_Presse pic.twitter.com/3EHkip2mJn

— Georg Restle (@georgrestle) July 3, 2018

Georg Restle, editor in chief for WDR Monitor which you previously described as "the media watchdog" and publicly funded, writing a piece for WDR print making the case for journalism driven by values and against neutral reporting.

Edit: Looking into this a bit further because I was unaware of this. Reading his replies to tweets helps understanding his mindset. Here's what I take from this

• It's impossible to be neutral because the mere selection on which news to report on will already show bias.
• Forced neutrality will be nothing but regurgitating PR campaign unchecked. He says opinions should be marked as such but I it doesn't seems as if he would support a clear separation between reporting and opninion pieces.
• He says that the values that should drive reporting are constitutional such as humanism and free speech. I have a big problem with this! If you want to apply any sort of objective measure for this you would have to go by what the Federal Constitunional Court rules by whose measure the NPD is in accordance with the constitution given that attempts to ban it have failed. Restle clearly positions himself opposite to values held by AfD which is a party to the left of NPD. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it but in this context his piece clearly comes off as him wanting journalists to be the moral arbiters.
• He makes the case for non-neutral but unbiased reporting. Is it reasonable to assume this is even possible? Is he making the case for partisan, echo-chamber like media here? Does this have ANY place in publicly funded media?

 

[notimp]

Same stuff got mentioned in the Hersh Interview (do we need more straight shooters, or crusaders). I think its bogus. Not because it wouldnt work - but because it wouldnt make things better.

My position always was and will be not to pay into the following: That you are paying a cut to social networks for attention - and that that as a business model will work - because everything scales amazingly. And that this basically is bogus and that social media currently gets money for about as low effort stuff as you can get. They are the "we arent responsible for anything" part of what in the future will be the entire attention economy and most of the advertising market. And maybe the new form of democracy as well. (The social score stuff.)

Now journalists are supposed to do jumping jacks for a little bit of that market.

You see the EXACT same argument in the Forum Alpbach video I posted in the "asocial media" thread in the offtopic forum. That ticked me off.

"Everyone has to learn a little bit more how to "dance monkey, dance" - so they can matter again." Super personal, opinion instread of fact... Matter to the irrational.

Regardless of how you put it - this is a dumbing down of the whole thing.

That way you'll end with entities, that will pivot based on perceived trends.

The people with a university diploma will not parttake and read "privately financed" (usually Stiftungen) newspapers instead, which is the only other model that will be out there - afaik.

This I wrote based on the headline - now, let me actually read the article.

The entire thing is based around the fact, that people arent actively looking for you anymore - and now you try to find a way around that. The position of the google sponsored journalism Professors always was "do the monkey dance, pay my sponsors 30%".

But at least the privately financed outlets will then have the time for reporting again, people tell me. Thats the other part thats missing and that you cant easily fix - there is such a high "incentive" to breaking a story first now - that journalism as a whole has suffered. Hardly anyone has the two days anymore to "go after" a story. That was also the excuse of our pathological liar at the Spiegel btw. "fear of not being able to keep up". That guy already did "human interest" stories. The social commentary for the casual reader.

edit: Read the article. Not much more to add. Can journalism be objective? Of course not. But the notion that it is, is an important part of the selfimages within the business. If you set that aside, I dont know if stuff gets better. Thats the whole self imposed morals (Selbseverpflichtung) thing. It never quite works, but as an ideal it keeps stuff on track. Objectivism (as far as its possible) you get by comparing limited, but diverse points of view - not popular opinions.

 

[supersonicwaffle]

Same stuff got mentioned in the Hersh Interview (do we need more straight shooters, or crusaders). I think its bogus. Not because it wouldnt work - but because it wouldnt make things better.

My position always was and will be not to pay into the following: That you are paying a cut to social networks for attention - and that that as a business model will work - because everything scales amazingly. And that this basically is bogus and that social media currently gets money for about as low effort stuff as you can get. They are the "we arent responsible for anything" part of what in the future will be the entire attention economy and most of the advertising market. And maybe the new form of democracy as well. (The social score stuff.)

Now journalists are supposed to do jumping jacks for a little bit of that market.

You see the EXACT same argument in the Forum Alpbach video I posted in the "asocial media" thread in the offtopic forum.

"Everyone has to learn a little bit more how to "dance monkey, dance" - so they can matter again." Super personal, opinion instread of fact... Matter to the irrational.

Regardless of how you put it - this is a dumbing down of the whole thing.

That way you'll end with entities, that will pivot based on perceived trends.

The people with a university diploma will not parttake and read "privately financed" (usually Stiftungen) newspapers instead, which is the only other model that will be out there - afaik.

This I wrote based on the headline - now, let me actually read the article.

The entire thing is based around the fact, that people arent actively looking for you anymore - and now you try to find a way around that. The position of the google sponsored journalism Professors always was "do the monkey dance, pay my sponsors 30%".

But at least the privately financed outlets will then have the time for reporting again, people tell me. Thats the other part thats missing and that you cant easily fix - there is such a high "incentive" to breaking a story first now - that journalism as a whole has suffered. That was also the excuse of our pathological liar at the Spiegel btw. "fear of not being able to keep up". That guy already did "human interest" stories. The social commentary for the casual reader.

Dude. I tried replying but I don't think I understandstand what you're saying :/

 

[Jayro]

Imagine having the name "Der".

 

[notimp]

Dude. I tried replying but I don't think I understandstand what you're saying :/

I've just added the "logic of social media" to the mix.

Hyper personal, emotional, congregating people, creating content thats always wow and and look at my personality. If you read Jeff Jarvis (journalism professor whose research is sponsored by f.e. google) - he's basically on the forefront of "having people do journalism on a Twitch stream" - and was so for the past five years.

The thing is, that people came to journalistic outlets (a paper for example), because they were interested in what they had to offer - but now they mostly stay on social media and get emotional click bait - when an algo surfaces it.

More "opinion" stuff will fit into this model - but it doesnt confront the crisis journalism is having - namely that people consume all kind of media content these days that isnt produced by journalism at all - and they find it hard to see the difference.

Georg Restle in the artiicle above basically tells everyone to grow a hipster beard, and get their emojis on - for the sake of journalism. "Become a personal brand."

The "loss of trust" in journalism was not that people where not told the truth all the time - it was "they never talk about the stories I like" - which were russian models telling them "deutsche Welle" stories from RTs perspective... And fear the immigrant.

If you are producing more "journalistic opinion leaders", what is really gained? I mean you stroke some egos. You can stay happening on facebook. People might be more entertained... You follow the "what works on facebook" model, and therefore get more societal influence. Great.

Cant wait for the Twitter fudes and follower battles.

Donald Trump vs my favorite subjective journalist.

Tilo Jung and Stefan Schulz (of one of the biggest political alternative Podcasts in Germany) were just "congratulated by their fans" for finally having also embraced the "green economy". Set aside, that I have my personal difficulties with it (if you are a sociopolitical initiative, and I ask you what is your goal, and you say "to safe the planet", ...) - is that really what we want?

 

[supersonicwaffle]

I've just added the "logic of social media" to the mix.

Hyper personal, emotional, congregating people, creating content thats always wow and and look at my personality. If you read Jeff Jarvis (journalism professor whose research is sponsored by f.e. google) - he's basically on the forefront of "having people do journalism on a Twitch stream" - and was so for the past five years.

This type of content is not unique to social media, this type of content has existed before.

The thing is, that people came to journalistic outlets (a paper for example), because they were interested in what they had to offer - but now they mostly stay on social media and get emotional click bait - when an algo surfaces it.

I'd be interested in numbers to back that up. It doesn't make sense to me. If I have an interest in what news outlets have to offer, I follow them on social media, any algorithm will try to serve types of content that I've previously shown interest in including news outlets, to maximize my time on the platform.
You're either grossly misrepresenting how the algorithms work or you're trying to make an argument that people previously interested in news outlets are not anymore and jump to the conclusion that they just aren't served what they're interested in by an algorithm.

More "opinion" stuff will fit into this model - but it doesnt confront the crisis journalism is having - namely that people consume all kind of media content these days that isnt produced by journalism at all.

I don't agree with you AT ALL here. People have always been consuming non journalistic content, but I take it you want to discredit independent journalists writing on their own blogs or covering news on YouTube as not being journalists simply because they aren't published in traditional media.
I'm sorry but that's more indicative of someone that doesn't understand the market anymore, maybe because they're stuck in old ways. This way of thinking has been the downfall of many an enterprise tech, media and otherwise.
The crisis mainstream journalism is having is that they have lost trust and a lot of that trust was lost because independent journalists fact checked their BS.

Georg Restle in the artiicle above basically tells everyone to grow a hipster beard, and get their emojis on - for the sake of journalism. "Become a personal brand."

And in my opinion he's completely out of touch with his audience, he's mostly facing criticism for it in his twitter replies as well. More indication that he just doesn't understand the market or his job anymore.
He literally states that journalism should not be neutral because the political center may drift to the right and therefor be stupid. He's like a little child that wants to take his toys home because people don't want to put up with BS. It's utterly ridiculous.

The "loss of trust" in journalism was not that people where not told the truth all the time - it was "they never talk about the stories I like" - which were russian models telling them "deutsche Welle" stories from RTs perspective... And fear the immigrant.

These are pretty wild assertions. As a matter of fact Tagesschau had record breaking numbers last year even without counting online views from Mediathek, Alexa skills, Podcasts or other ways the show is distributed.
I don't buy into that people are less interested in news, sorry.

If you are producing more "journalistic opinion leaders", what is really gained? I mean you stroke some egos. You can stay happening on facebook. People might be more entertained... You follow the "what works on facebook" model, and therefore get more societal influence. Great.

It's exactly what they're doing with Funk on YouTube and it has backfired massively. One of their channels (Jäger & Sammler) was basically laughed off the platform and are now concentrating on Facebook as their main platform. More indication that people in charge don't understand the new market situation.

 

[Saiyan Lusitano]

Google lists

That's your mistake. Don't rely just on one search engine.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/807622-never-let-the-truth-get-in-the-way-of-a

there's no good alternative for conservative news

Facts can be manipulated easily and twisted so it's better to do your own research.

Even popular known beliefs/history portrayed as facts were made up. Just because the majority thinks it's true, it doesn't mean that it actually is.

 

[Xzi]

Facts can be manipulated easily and twisted so it's better to do your own research.

Even popular known beliefs/history portrayed as facts were made up. Just because the majority thinks it's true, it doesn't mean that it actually is.

Yeah but we're talking about instances of a person saying one thing, then completely contradicting themselves hours or a day later. Then lying about their original statement. Then conservative media pretends the first part never happened and go along with the obvious (objective) lie.

That's entirely different from typical whitewashing of history and other typical factual inaccuracies.

 

[D34DL1N3R]

What blows my mind is righties acting like POS Trump and Fox News have never delivered any "fake news" a day in their life. They go above and beyond fake on a daily basis. Any one of them who wants to point a finger at CNN in front of me & try to act holier than thou, and I'll break it right off their hand. There's nothing most people hate more than a hypocrite.

 

[FierceDeityLinkMask]

What blows my mind is righties acting like POS Trump and Fox News have never delivered any "fake news" a day in their life. They go above and beyond fake on a daily basis. Any one of them who wants to point a finger at CNN in front of me & try to act holier than thou, and I'll break it right off their hand. There's nothing most people hate more than a hypocrite.

How dare you say that about Fox News? It's one of the most reliable news outlets in the world. Almost as reliable as InfoWars. Also, the GOD EMPEROR PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP never lies. YOU are FAKE NEWS!

 

[burial]

Surprised?

Some american news channels are nothing but fake news......one in particular.

 

[notimp]

Surprised?

Some american news channels are nothing but fake news......one in particular.

Why is no one commenting on this? You all have given up right. This is just stuff you turn your head at, when you see it on Facebook.

*ts*

Der Spiegel now released an entire "we so sorry" issue - "for free" (*smirk*): http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-43950.pdf

This one is actually sickening. Its the Spiegel saying, we so bad, but others also were affected, but less badly, and we immediatly reacted, and our bad reporter he so smart and criminal, he even faked an email, that technical genius, and our other reporter that brought this to light, he such a smart investigative guy - and here is your human interest story about when he first had doubts, and then he voiced , them - but then bad reporter said this to him...

Just shut up and take the blame for gods sake. Is my immediate gut reaction. This is written in a way to "best rectify" everything that happened. Here, have it for free.

edit: Stuff like this

Misstrauisch betrachtet Geicke auch den Schlussabsatz der Geschichte, in dem die Hauptfigur Jaeger angeblich einen Schuss in die Nacht abfeuert, womöglich auf einen Migranten. Relotius erwidert laut Geicke, der Mann ballere häufiger in der Gegend herum. »Ich habe ihm dann geglaubt«, sagt Geicke.

(Translation: Leerily Geiker [the factchecker] looks at the final paragraph of the story, where the main protagonist Jaeger - allegedly - fires a shot into the night, perhaps at a migrant. Relotius [bad guy journalist] responds - so Geike - that the man would quite often fire randomly into the surroundings. "I believed him", says Geike [the factchecker].)

Die meisten Kollegen reagieren erschüttert. Bei einigen fließen Tränen.

(Translation "Most colleagues are astonished [by the reveal]. Some even shed tears.")

Juan Moreno ist dieser Co-Autor, seit 2007 als Reporter für den SPIEGEL in aller Welt unterwegs. Im Streit mit und über Relotius riskiert Moreno seinen eigenen Job, zwischenzeitlich recherchiert er dem Kollegen, verzweifelt, auf eigene Kosten hinterher. Drei, vier Wochen lang geht Moreno durch die Hölle, weil Kolleginnen und Vorgesetzte in Hamburg seine Vorwürfe anfangs gar nicht glauben können. Relotius? Ein Fälscher? Der bescheidene Claas? Ausgerechnet?

(Translation: Juan Moreno is this co-author [good guy journalist], as a reporter for Der Spiegel since 2007 working all around the world. In his conflict with Relotius, Moreno risks his own job, while in the meantime researching after the story of his colleague, desperatly - on his own dime. Three, four weeks Moreno struts through hell, because his associates and superiors in Hamburg at first cant believe his accusations. Relotius? A forger? The humble Claas guy? He of all people?

Emphasis (bold text) set by Der Spiegel.

- is just manipulative.

Thats bad journalism.

(But works well on social media.)

 

[supersonicwaffle]

Why is no one commenting on this? You all have given up right. This is just stuff you turn your head at, when you see it on Facebook.

*ts*

Der Spiegel now released an entire "we so sorry" issue - "for free" (*smirk*): http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-43950.pdf

This one is actually sickeing. Its the Spiegel saying, we so bad, but others also were affected, but less badly, and we immediatly reacted, and our bad reporter he so smart and criminal, he even faked an email, that technical genius, and our other reporter that brought this to light, he such a smart investigative guy - and here is your human interest story about when he first had doubts, and then he voiced , them - but then bad reporter said this to him...

Just shut up and take the blame for gods sake. Is my immediate gut reaction. This is written in a way to "best rectify" everything that happened. Here, have it for free.

Thanks for sharing it. Will read it later today. Read somewhere the piece on the fraud is supposedly 23 pages long.

What's also interesting is that he apparently went off and asked for donations via email. Donations were sent to his private bank account, at this time it's still unsure what happened with it.

 

[ItsMetaKnight]

Just the tip of the iceberg.

 

[notimp]

Here is the vilification in prosa (Der Spiegel, see link above):

"Ich glaube", sagte Relotius vergangene Woche, "ein normaler Mensch würde sagen, hör' mal, Chef, das funktioniert hier nicht, ich sitze fest, wir können die Geschichte nicht machen." Aber Relotius zählt offenbar nicht zu den normalen Menschen. "Ich neige dazu", sagt er, "die Kontrolle haben zu wollen. Und ich habe diesen Drang, diesen Trieb, es doch irgendwie zu schaffen. Man schafft es natürlich nicht. Man schafft eine Fälschung."

(Translation: "I think", says Relotius last week, "a normal human would say, listen boss, this doesnt work here, I'm stuck, we cant make that story" But Relotius seemingly isnt part of those normal people. "I have the tendency", he says, "wanting to have control. And I have this tendency, this - urge - to somehow make it work. Of course you dont. You then create a fake.")

Yes, thank you for this speech out of "the villains" mouth. Excusing his superior of all wrongdoing.

Boy, I hope I'm up to the part where the good guy journalist kisses the female love interest soon...

 

[notimp]

Just the tip of the iceberg.

You go ahead and only read facebook newsfeeds from now on.

His statement by the way is whats called a trueism. Something that you never can quite deny. Its the same as "the dark figure is higher" thats emotional outrage bait as well.

Media literacy ftw.

You are not adding to this story, by stating how you feel about it in ten words or less, or that you'd had always known. If you do that - you are just drawing a straight line from something you were emotional about in the past - to this.

I know that this is freaking common on social media, but please give your impressions or thoughts more substance if you can. To stuff this story with gossip doesnt help. Its bad enough already.

 

[supersonicwaffle]

Oh boy just started reading. Amateur hour at its finest.

The guy had no recordings, no photographs, no documentation, no nothing. A co-worker tasked with examining pieces for authenticity or plausibility had his doubts but ultimately went "¯\_(ツ)_/¯, guess he's telling the truth, really hard to verify things"

Am I crazy to expect certain deliverables from research such as photographs, recordings, journals or even just receipts that show the journalist was anywhere near where he's saying he was?
Am I crazy to expect stuff like this be set up to automatically sync to the headquarter's IT infrastructure for preservation? What happens in case this guys device is lost or damaged?
Am I crazy to expect that the person verifying this story should look at this stuff?

I'm only two pages in but I'm already infuriated at how simple it really was for relotius to slip through.

EDIT:

Oh boy

Di Lorenzo: Vielleicht ist es in dieser Ausnahmesituation erlaubt, aus dem Nähkästchen zu plaudern. Nach meiner Erinnerung waren in den letzten Jahren mindestens zwei Geschichten von Claas Relotius in der Diskussion für die beste Reportage des Jahres. Aber in der Jury gab es Zweifel an den Geschichten.

Di Lorenzo, editor in chief at "Zeit" is saying that multiple members of a prize committee had significant doubt about the veracity of Relotius' stories. According to Wikipedia the committee almost always had the current editor in chief from SPIEGEL as a member. Now they have the nerve to write as if they were completely oblivious to the fact his pieces may be fabricated. If Di Lorenzo is to be taken by his word, this means SPIEGEL actively fostered a culture to allow for frauds and didn't allow doubt about Relotius to seep into their minds.

 

[FAST6191]

The guy had no recordings, no photographs, no documentation, no nothing. A co-worker tasked with examining pieces for authenticity or plausibility had his doubts but ultimately went "¯\_(ツ)_/¯, guess he's telling the truth, really hard to verify things"

Am I crazy to expect certain deliverables from research such as photographs, recordings, journals or even just receipts that show the journalist was anywhere near where he's saying he was?
Am I crazy to expect stuff like this be set up to automatically sync to the headquarter's IT infrastructure for preservation? What happens in case this guys device is lost or damaged?
Am I crazy to expect that the person verifying this story should look at this stuff?

I'm only two pages in but I'm already infuriated at how simple it really was for relotius to slip through.

Not that it excuses anything but I imagine the first thing to be cut as things feel the squeeze (not like newspaper has been the most lucrative of industries these last few decades) is the department that routinely says "all good" and starts to look more and more like an expense, especially if those they look at are considered upstanding members of society doing their bit. Actually you say IT is your game so you probably have sat there with people seeing the money fly out into your department and not generate any income per se aka you are an expense, however in the middle of their clueless rant you start to ponder how long it would take for things to fall over if you all vanished tomorrow.

I don't know what the journalistic equivalent is but spies call them paper mills. When your checking department goes skeleton crew you probably get them as the first thing to slip through the net.

 

[notimp]

These are pretty wild assertions. As a matter of fact Tagesschau had record breaking numbers last year even without counting online views from Mediathek, Alexa skills, Podcasts or other ways the show is distributed.
I don't buy into that people are less interested in news, sorry.

Not what I meant.

People are less interested in the news outlet itself (the "source"). Two examples: 1. People stopped "clicking through" to the original webpage on facebook anymore, to them they get their news "from facebook" (Their videos are autoplaying, why leave the stream.. Thats design.) 2. The google news story about "we dont permit you to use our stories, oops - our reader numbers fell by 50+%".

People are still interested in stories - but they can get them "where they already are" (talking to their friends on facebook), and therefore are less interested in news outlets. (Also, if you make them choose between facebook and lets say The Guardian, ... )

Same thing with the short ads stuff (the thing people are now using craigslist for, or facebook auctions). Same thing with the advertisers telling them - look, facebook knows more about my potential customer, than you do.

I dont see how adhering to facebook logic ("become a personal brand") fixes that. It just strokes peoples egos and plays into the "only whats popular is important" narrative (you dont have a medium any more that can "subsidise" the important story with some popular ones - everything is now optimized for popularity (algorithm)).

From my perspective, this harms journalism more, than it benefits it. You end up with those guys:

(Image stolen from youtube - where it belongs... )

But then my main issue here is "facebook", or "google news", or the aggregators...

Taking a 30% (usually) cut of the income, while having ruined the advertising market for conventional media (they know much more about their "customer").

Replacing agenda setting with popularity algorithms (I like).

But then thats not a very profound relization as well. I simply want the old system back. Which is never going to happen either.

Also - I dont see this getting "fixed" by journalists becoming more "personal" (presenting people with opinions instead of something you intentionaly try to take commentary or perspective out of (=not quite fact, but.. )).

Thats also why I dont see this as the great new future of media. If it happens, the "educated" people will still rather flock to outlets that follow a different standard - which currently some believe will then be mostly those run by people who are willing to loose money and still dont downsize the editorial staff (Bezos, ...).

 

[CORE]

This is nothing new most shit nowadays is Biased and Fake News or Scare Mongering about something just to get a response whether it be anger or compassion etc either way they succeed because they got the response. This Winter will be the worst because it is going to snow and gale force winds or blizzards etc Fear Mongering Crap It is the Winter after all they over hype what is obvious Because it is Story Telling.

It is like this nonsense with CNN or MSNBC and all the crap about Trump Stop Spreading Fake News and Report the Bloody News.


OVER DRAMATIC OVER HYPED.