>Der Spiegel published the final investigation report in May 2019, concluding that "no indications were found that anyone at DER SPIEGEL was aware of the fabrication, helped cover them up or otherwise participated in them"
No worries, no one has bad intentions. They're just thoroughly incompetent.
There is also former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who, in his former career as “journalist” was fired for fabricating stories about the European Union that contributed to the climate of Euroskepticism that ultimately led to Brexit, and Johnson’s rise to power. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
"clearly politically motivated." - interesting, how so?
Most of the people I talked about it see his forgeries as "simple" work for awards/compliments: Everything he wrote/reported seemed believable, because it was in range/sync with events/storys/news that actually happened.
Again, I'd love to know how to identify his/the political motivation.
> because it was in range/sync with events/storys/news that actually happened.
As far as I understand he never wrote anything special or world changing, he took stories you already heard a million times and created pieces of fiction that pandered to the sensibilities of his core audience. A story about the life in a small town in the US? Boring! Lets add in a bit of racism here, a literal Trump cult there, re-frame it as some backwater town in the middle of the woods and a few more changes later you have a story people want to read, not quite "The Call of Cthulhu" but maybe enough to bridge the gap to the next award winning piece of journalistic fiction about the just as colorfully exaggerated struggles of a refuge family on their way to Europe or the life and motivations of freedom fighters in remote corners of the world.
No worries, no one has bad intentions. They're just thoroughly incompetent.