Claas Relotius was never questioned about his articles, mainly because he is a die-hard liberal who paints conservatives as uneducated, sister marrying Trump sycophants.
But he has just resigned after it was discovered that he just made his stories up in his head, since reality didn’t coincide with the message he was trying to convey. Relotius writes for Der Spiegel. They should have known when they hired him that he was deeply involved in fake news, having previously worked for CNN.
Juan Moreno had done a story with Relotius and had some doubts about his reporting, so he tracked down the two people Relotius said he had spoken to about the article, but neither one of them had even heard of Relotius before.
Earlier this month, he won Germany’s Reporterpreis (Reporter of the Year) for his story about a young Syrian boy, which the jurors praised for its “lightness, poetry and relevance”. It has since emerged that all the sources for his reportage were at best hazy, and much of what he wrote was made up.
The falsification 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, having harboured doubts about him for some time.
The colleague, Juan Moreno, eventually tracked down two alleged sources quoted extensively by Relotius in the article, which was published in November. Both said they had never met Relotius. Relotius had also lied about seeing a hand-painted sign that read “Mexicans keep out”, a subsequent investigation found.
Other fraudulent stories included one about a Yemeni prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, and one about the American football star Colin Kaepernick.
Relotius wrote a story about a small Minnesota town and his main character in the story was about Fergus Falls city administrator, Andrew Bremseth.
Here is the story behind that tall tale:
“Andrew Bremseth would like to marry soon, he says, but he was never together with a woman. He has also never seen the ocean.”
Relotius chose to put the spotlight on Fergus Falls city administrator, Andrew Bremseth, as the main character in his article. We have spoken to Bremseth at length regarding the parts of the story that feature him, and Relotius got three facts right:
Bremseth’s age (27)
That he grew up in Fergus Falls
That he went to university in South Dakota
Everything else, from the claim that Bremseth carries a Beretta 9mm on his person while at work (“I would never ever wear a gun to work, and I don’t even own a Beretta.”), his disdain for a potential female president, his comment that Trump would “kick ass” (“Never said that”), and even his college-era preference for 18th century French philosophers (“Never read them”) and the New England Patriots (“I’m not a fan of them at all”), is complete fiction. Says Bremseth, “Anyone who knows anything about me, this [portrayal] is the furthest from what I stand for.”
Perhaps the oddest fiction in a list of many is Relotius’ depiction of Bremseth as someone who “would like to marry soon…but he has not yet been in a serious relationship with a woman. He has also never been to the ocean.”
We can attest that Bremseth has indeed been to the ocean, by his account, “many times” and is currently happily involved in a multi-year, cohabitational relationship with a woman named Amber. In fact, here’s a picture of the two of them in front of, all things, an ocean.
Bremseth has been to the ocean many times including trips with his life in girlfriend.