By Peter Schwarz
31 December 2018
The exposure of journalistic
fraud at the German news weekly Der Spiegel has lifted the lid on the
manipulation of public opinion by the so-called “authoritative” media. While
Facebook, Google, Twitter and other social media systematically censor
unwelcome posts, the supposedly “reliable” and “objective” reporting by the
mainstream media proves to be propaganda produced in cooperation with the state
to promote the interests of the ruling class. In the name of combatting “fake
news,” freedom of the press and freedom of opinion are being gutted.
Last week, the editors
of Der Spiegel, the highest-circulation German news magazine, admitted that
they had published 55 articles by the journalist Claas Relotius that were
“completely or partially invented, falsified, forged.”
Relotius has also written
numerous articles for other German media outlets.
Since the public
acknowledgment by Der Spiegel’s editors, the news weekly’s editorial board
has endeavoured to portray the Relotius scandal as a unique case in which
genius, a desire for prestige, nihilistic energy and psychological instability
came together. According to media reports, Spiegel has provided the
counterfeiter, who voluntarily resigned following his exposure, with
psychological care and a lawyer.
Relotius may be an exception
in the brazenness of his forgeries, but the much more important question is why
his fabrications were published by Spiegel and other media and why he
was awarded numerous journalistic prizes. At the tender age of 33, Relotius has
received almost a dozen prestigious awards by juries that included not only
journalists, but also prominent figures in politics and public life.
His forgeries, as it turns
out, were by no means difficult to see through. The Spiegel editorial
board repeatedly ignored anomalies and warnings. Now it admits with disarming
openness that Relotius’ reports were “too good to be true.”
What is the significance of
this scandal? According to commentators, although Relotius’ reports were fake,
they were still “beautiful,” i.e., they corresponded to the narrative the
editors and journalism award jurors wanted to promulgate. In his writing, “the
present is concentrated into a readable format, the grand outlines of
contemporary history become comprehensible, and suddenly the great whole
becomes completely humanly comprehensible,” Spiegel editor-in-chief
Ullrich Fichtner gushed following the exposure. As long as the forgeries were
not discovered, they were welcome.
Many of Relotius’ articles
deal with topics that are particularly sensitive from the point of view of
bourgeois propaganda, such as the background to Trump’s rise in the US and the
wars in Iraq and Syria.
To justify the Western
military interventions in the Middle East, a fairy tale by Relotius about two
young brothers (“lion boys”) kidnapped, tortured and trained by the Islamic
State (ISIS) to become suicide bombers proved much more effective than a
carefully researched piece into the real background to the wars. Such an
article would have to admit—if it were honest—that ISIS and other Islamist
militias are, above all, a product of the intrigues of the US and its allies in
NATO and in the Middle East.
Relotius’s fabrications fit
seamlessly into a stream of disinformation that has lasted for nearly 16
years—since then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his infamous speech at
the UN on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Although the entire speech was
based on lies and forgeries, it was largely accepted uncritically by the
international media and served as a justification for the bloodiest war of the
21st century, which continues to this day.
Freedom of the press is an
achievement of the bourgeois revolution. The bourgeoisie upheld it as long as
it was fighting against the supremacy of the aristocracy, and later enshrined
it in its constitutions. While capitalism remained capable of social
compromise, such freedoms retained a spark of life.
But freedom of the press is
not compatible with war, militarism and a society based on intolerable levels
of social inequality.
Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein, who exposed the Watergate scandal, were still being celebrated and
honoured in the 1970s. Today, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, who have
uncovered incomparably more serious crimes of US imperialism, are isolated and
living in forced exile, and must fear for their lives. Outrageous
counterfeiters such as Relotius, on the other hand, are awarded prizes.
The incestuous relationship
between the world of politics and the media has taken on a dimension that
defies description. Billion-dollar media conglomerates dominate the press.
Journalists and leading politicians know each other, mingle at the same bars,
and frolic together alongside film stars and other celebrities at annual press
galas.
As with the establishment
political parties, the terms “left” and “right” have lost all meaning in
relation to the media. Stefan Aust, previously the long-standing
editor-in-chief of Spiegel, who began his career in 1966 at the left-wing
publication konkret, is now editor of Die Welt, the flagship paper of
the right-wing Springer publishing house.
Nikolaus Blome, deputy
editor-in-chief of Springer's rag Bild, worked for a time for the Spiegel editor-in-chief.
Other leading journalists also regularly switch from one publication to the
other, with the pro-Green Party taz proving to be particularly
fertile ground for up-and-coming bourgeois journalists.
Relotius has also published
his articles across the entire spectrum of the German media—from taz to Die
Zeit, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and
Springer’s Welt. In second place behind Spiegel in terms of
articles published by Relotius is the Swiss Weltwoche, mouthpiece of the
ultra-right Swiss People’s Party, with 28 pieces.
Social reality, the sentiments
and needs of the masses hardly exist in the closed circle of the political
parties, the media and the super-rich. The media have become instruments of
state propaganda. This is the reason Claas Relotius—a contemporary version of
Thomas Mann’s impostor Felix Krull—could become a star journalist.
Workers and young people have
long been suspicious of the official media and are searching the internet for
alternative, more objective sources of information. This is the reason for the
hysterical campaign against “fake news,” which serves as a pretext for
censoring the internet and is directed in particular against left-wing,
anti-capitalist publications. Both the European Union and the German government
have enacted internet censorship laws under the false flag of combatting “fake
news.” Facebook alone employs 30,000 people to censor unwelcome posts. Terms
such as “comrade” and “brother” suffice for an entry to be deleted.
This censorship, which is
particularly directed against the World Socialist Web Site, shows how
important it is to build and disseminate wsws.org.
As the central organ of the International Committee of the Fourth
International, the WSWS is completely independent of bourgeois donors and
government influence. It calls things by their name, analyses the facts with
ruthless objectivity and fights to arm the working class with an understanding
of the capitalist crisis and a socialist perspective.
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