US Ambassador To Germany Attacked After Demanding Spiegel “Fake News” Investigation
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Sun, 12/23/2018
US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell has come under fire for demanding an independent probe into Germany’s most significant journalism scandal in decades, after Der Spiegel admitted on Wednesday that one of its star journalists, Klaas Relotius, had fabricated reports for years; much of it anti-American in nature.
Der Spiegel, Europe’s biggest-circulation current affairs magazine, revealed on Wednesday that award-winning writer Claas Relotius had been making up much of his reporting around the world, including crucial details in a colorful series of pieces about the U.S. that painted supporters of President Trump in Arizona and Minnesota as bigoted, radical, and at times xenophobic. -WSJ
In addition to having several awards stripped from him, the 33-year-old Relotius now faces embezzlement charges for allegedly soliciting donations for Syrian orphans from readers “with any proceeds going to his personal account,” according to the BBC.
In a late Friday letter to Der Spiegel’s editor in chief, Grenell requested an “independent and transparent investigation” to determine how the fraud went undetected for so long, adding that the revelations “are troubling to the US Embassy, particularly because several of these fake stories focused on US policies and certain segments of the American people.”
“We are concerned that the leadership of Der Spiegel encourages this form of reporting and that the reporters appear to deliver what the leadership wants,” wrote Grenell, who accused the paper of anti-American bias, and said the German paper “routinely included information and stories which could have been proven untrue if they had checked the facts with the Embassy first.”
“It is clear that we were the victims of a campaign of institutional bias,” Grenell wrotem adding “…it is routine practice for Spiegel reporters to not even call us before writing.”
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