I sat and read through a short piece this morning via Focus (the German news magazine) which discussed this whole fake journalism affair by the Spiegel editor Relotius. He's resigned from Spiegel now, and apparently on some 'treatment' program by a mental clinic. Two of the major managers of Spiegel are on suspended leave while the discussion revolves around their hiring him and how he apparently wrote bogus stories for several years.
So this commentator came up on Deutschlandfunk (Martin Tschechne) and wrote his thoughts on how Relotius got so far with the bogus journalism.
There in the middle of this is this great quote...."maybe no one wanted to doubt".
I can take that quote and spin it on hundreds of stories in the American or UK press. In fact, I can spin it in France, or Italy just as well.
It works on immigration, asylum, wars, conflicts, taxes, elections, public agendas, welfare, homelessness, poverty, investing, banks, farming, home construction, education, and even sports.
There used to be a fair amount of skeptical nature with people (maybe going back a hundred years ago). For some reason, the skeptical side to people has lessen.
The odds that another Relotius will be found in 2019? I suspect that dozens will start to appear in some challenged form, and all of them will have to go off for 'treatment'. Eventually, even this fake journalism treatment will be joked over, and people will become skeptical of that phrase.
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