The Russia connectionRussian agents in Western media
The exposure of a journalist of the German magazine, Der Spiegel, Claas Relotius, who falsified materials for his articles, was a real shock and sharply raised the issue of the availability of effective tools for controlling misinformation in the media community. In the early 1960s, Der Spiegel was involved in another scandal, when it ran a series of investigations by journalist Conrad Ahlers, who severely criticized and accused the then German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss of unprofessionalism and corruptionit. Strauss was forced to resign – but we now know that the conflict between Strauss and Der Spiegel was part of a Soviet special operation aimed at discrediting Strauss, who might have become the next chancellor of West Germany.
The exposure of a journalist of the German magazine, Der Spiegel, Claas Relotius, who falsified materials for his articles, was a real shock and sharply raised the issue of the availability of effective tools for controlling misinformation in the media community.
Relotius’ case is impressive. He managed not only to fool his readers and colleagues over the years but also spread lies and fabrications. He made a brilliant career and achieved a high degree of professional recognition. The winner of the European Press Award in 2017, the CNN Award in 2014, the German Reporter Award in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, Claas Relotius admitted that at least 14 of his reports were fake. Some of them were also nominated for and received journalism awards.
It is noteworthy that even after the exposure of Relotius, the management of Der Spiegel supported him for some time, stating that the journalist had become a victim of slander, and only after the emergence of irrefutable evidence, was forced to admit deception. In December 2018, Relotius was dismissed from Der Spiegel and his numerous journalistic awards were withdrawn.
The scandal became geopolitical after the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, in an open letter accused Der Spiegel of “anti-Americanism” and actual support of Relotius in inventing negative stories about the United States, which constituted an essential part of his reports. Grenell also called for an independent investigation into the breach of journalistic standards by the Der Spiegel editorial board, which did not carry out any verification of the facts contained in Relotius’s articles nor those by other journalists. In his reply, the editor-in-chief of the magazine acknowledged the violation of standards but denied the existence of any anti-American bias on the editorial board.
Criticism of Der Spiegel’s political scandals were once loud but today are forgotten. In the early 1960s, the magazine published a series of investigations by journalist Conrad Ahlers, who severely criticized and accused the then German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss, who was also chairman of the Christian Social Union, a key German center-right party, of unprofessionalism and corruption. The peak of the confrontation was in October 1962 after the publication by the magazine that the Defense Ministry, according to the Federal Republic of Germany, was allegedly unprepared for Soviet aggression. The consequences of the scandal, known as Spiegel-Affäre, led to the reformation of the parliamentary coalition and Straus’s resignation.
