In 2017, the German magazine Spiegel sent a
reporter to Fergus Falls, Minn., to write a story about Deep Trumplandia.
Unfortunately for Spiegel, Fergus Falls residents
Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn read the story and wrote a
stunning exposé on all the things he got wrong. “Got wrong” is too benign a
characterization.
Photo: Local heroes Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn kicked Eurotrash butt
The reporter, Claas Relotius, just made things up.
Photo: Reporter, Claas Relotius
Here is just one excerpt from the exposé by Fergus Falls residents Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn.
Claas Relotius wrote: “After three and a half hours, the bus bends
from the highway to a narrow, sloping street, rolling towards a dark forest
that looks like dragons live in it. At the entrance, just before the station,
there is a sign with the American stars and stripes banner, which reads:
“Welcome to Fergus Falls, home of damn good folks.”
Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn replied: "Fergus Falls is located on the prairie — which means our
landscape mostly consists of tall grass and lakes. While we have trees, we do
not have any distinct forests in our city limits, and definitely not in the
route that the bus Relotius would have taken from the Twin Cities. And sadly,
our welcome sign is quite mundane in its greeting."
It’s jaw-dropping stuff. Anderson and Krohn just annihilated
this jerk.
Anderson also wrote:
We hope that our version of this story makes
you think twice the next time you read an article claiming some kind of intellectual
authority over rural identity, and that you’ll come and see for yourself what
Fergus Falls is all about (we don’t mind a little tourism boost every now and
then — although we’re doing pretty well attracting artists from all around the nation,
among other things).
This is just a hunch, but it seems to me
that Relotius’ overseas readers might appreciate knowing that small American
towns are more complex than they imagine — that die-hard liberals like me can
still magically live alongside conservative Republicans — that sometimes we
even find some common ground and share a meal together, and take the time to
try to understand each other’s viewpoints.
You see, we’re definitely not
perfect here in Fergus Falls, and many of us feel a lot of responsibility right
now, considering that our friends, family and neighbors voted against their own
interests in 2016. But we also know how it feels to be ignored in policy and
media for decades only to be lectured by ignorant articles such as this after
so much silence about our challenges.
How on earth did Relotius think he was going to get away
with this stuff?
Truth is, prior to the Internet, he probably would have, given
that few if any of the town’s residents would have seen the article, which
flatters the prejudices of liberal Europeans, and if they had seen it, who
would have heard their protest?
There’s a happy ending: Spiegel fired
Claas Relotius for being a lying liar who has lied about more than Fergus
Falls.
_________________
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ARTICLES
Disgraced
German journalist now suspected of charity scam
Photo: Claas
Relotius
An award-winning German magazine writer who resigned in
disgrace for making up stories is suspected of embezzling cash he collected on
behalf of children orphaned by the war in Syria, according to his former
employer.
Der Spiegel said Sunday it had uncovered information that
Claas Relotius allegedly solicited contributions after writing an article about
Syrian urchins living on the streets of Turkey — but directed donations to his
own bank account.
“Der Spiegel will give all the information it collects to
public prosecutors as part of a criminal complaint,” the magazine said on its
website, according to Agence France-Presse.
The influential publication said it was unaware of the
purported charity campaign at the time and didn’t know how much money Relotius,
33, may have raised, apparently by responding to readers who emailed him after
reading his July 2016 report.
A Turkish photographer who worked with Relotius has since
claimed that the article has major inaccuracies, and Der Spiegel said Relotius
apparently invented the two young siblings who featured prominently in it.
He later wrote about trying to help the children get
adopted by a German family, which Der Spiegel also said appeared to be a lie.
Der Spiegel announced last week that Relotius had
admitted fabricating interviews and information in at least 14 articles, a scam
it called the “worst thing that can happen to an editorial team.”
Relotius went into hiding in the wake of the scandal but
sent a message of apology to Germany’s Reporter Forum, which gave him four
awards that he said he was returning.
CNN also stripped him of two Journalist of the Year
awards that he won for articles in the Swiss magazine Reportagen.
_________________________
German journalist resigns after writing fake
stories – including about Fergus Falls
By Adam
Uren
A writer for the respected German magazine, Der Spiegel,
has been fired after editors uncovered dozens of stories with featured
fabrications – including one about Fergus Falls.
The magazine on Wednesday published a long report following an internal investigation
into the articles of Claas Relotius, a 33-year-old investigative journalist.
The magazine said he was found to have committed
journalistic fraud "on a grand scale" over several years, according to the Guardian.
Among the articles that he is found to have fabricated
concerns one about Fergus Falls, Minnesota, where Relotius spent some time in
early 2017 with the intention of writing about a Trump-voting area of America.
"The underpinning idea, originating in the Hamburg
news office/editorial office, was not about haughty demonization of the first
months of Trump from the perspective of Europeans, but about looking at that
time frame through the eyes of those who had presumably voted for Big
Don," Der Spiegel says.
"The plan was for Relotius to rent in Fergus Falls,
meet people, listen, and record a small time image that would make you understand
the Americans a little better."
However, the magazine notes that Relotius
found nobody who could give him the story he was looking for, with Der Spiegel
writing: "There is simply no story, no one can be found."
But rather than give up and admit this, he started
making stuff up, beginning his story by generating a fictional sign at the
entrance of the city that read: "Mexicans Keep Out – Mexicans, Stay
Away."
This sign never existed, "it was only in the
imagination of the author," and as a result "insulted the inhabitants
of Fergus Falls."
Relotius went on to write that students at Kennedy High
School were asked to paint models of the American Dream, and he said that all
but a few painted Donald Trump.
"All this is a lie, just everything, it's
crap," Der Spiegel says.
Relotius in 2014 was named CNN's Journalist of the Year for a piece he wrote
about care-giving in U.S. prisons for a Swiss magazine.