Spiegel apologises in cover story on faked news scandal

BERLIN: German news weekly Der Spiegel publishes on Saturday a 23-page special report on how one of its award-winning reporters faked stories for years, dealing a blow to media credibility.

Claas Relotius, 33, resigned after admitting to making up stories and inventing protagonists in more than a dozen articles in the magazine’s print and online editions. Since the scandal revealed by the magazine on Wednesday, other mainstream German outlets like Die Welt and Die Zeit which once used Relotius as a freelancer, have also begun poring through articles that he wrote for them.

"Tell it like it is," wrote Spiegel on its latest magazine cover page, in an allusion to the publication’s motto by its founder Rudolf Augstein that also hangs at the entrance of its headquarters in Hamburg.

In its editorial, the magazine said the scam, involving subjects including Syrian orphans and a Holocaust survivor, is the "worst thing that can happen to an editorial team." It also apologised for the mistake and promised to "do everything to boost our credibility again."

Relotius had written for the magazine for seven years and won numerous awards for his investigative journalism, including CNN Journalist of the Year in 2014. The cheating came to light after a colleague who worked with him on a story along the US-Mexican border raised suspicions about some of the details in Relotius’s reporting.