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Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

I live in Germany and the story of the liar journalist fascinates me. There are multiple things at play here, that man did similar things with Syrian kids etc.

Ultimately the reason why he did it is because he could and I blame the nonexistent fact checking at Spiegel for this. But on a more personal level Relotius said he couldn’t stand the pressure of not delivering a great story (he won multiple awards first). I would also blame these awards for beeing to trusting, somebody like him should never have reached this level of fame and reputation.

I never really read his stuff, but I remember reading one story a long time ago that had someone start singing a song and I remembered wondering if this really happended or if I am in the realm of phantasy there. Now I know.

The problem is incentives, always

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The problem is incentives, always

As a German living in Hamburg, where three of the main German publications (Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Der Stern) are produced (and Die Bild as well as Die Welt were also until recently), having worked with as well as being friends with a lot of people working there, I can assure you: it's not just incentives for the author, but also incentives for other people in the news organization(s) at work here.

The author's completely made up stories about, e.g. ...

- an American women who is traveling the whole country voluntarily, so that the quorum of one person being present at an execution for it to happen is met

- an innocent Syrian boy who thinks he caused the civil war

- an American town at the Mexican border, that is openly racist and full of dumb backwater, redneck folk

... feed into a commonly shared narrative. Those kind of elegantly written stories serve to immortalize these world-views held by many working at those companies.

Veterans of Der Spiegel were quick to point out, that in their days of working there, it would have been impossible to get even one of his reports pass the inhouse fact checkers and attribute this current blindsightedness to the rise of constructivism amongst journalists.

> rise of constructivism amongst journalists.

In what sense do you use constructivism here? I assume it's not mathematical constructivism.

Yes. Constructivism in Journalism refers to constructing the truth (around a narrative).

Two examples:

1) As avid reader of American news, I'm always amazed by their one-sidedness when they report about "success"-stories of the German renewable energies program ("Now This" has multiple videos that if translated to German would come across as a teenager's propaganda attempt). But since their audience is American, usually not fluent in German, it's a cakewalk to "construct the truth" by not write a single sentence about domestic German criticisms of those programs.

2) The right-wing example in Germany would be reporting about violent and raping refugees, without stating that most of the victims are refugees themself and that it is often refugees who help with the investigations etc.

> "Now This" has multiple videos that if translated to German would come across as a teenager's propaganda attempt

“Now This” has nothing that doesn't come across as a teenager's propaganda attempt (or, perhaps more to the point, rehashing press releases from interested parties) in English, so I'm not to surprised you think it would come off that way translated to German.

Then again, if you asked Americans to name a respected news source, “Now This” wouldn't be a frequent response.

Sure, my main point was: If I read about German renewable energy programs in respected US news sources, I seldomly see our domestic criticisms even mentioned there too.

„Now this“ is of course an exaggeration of journalistic constructionism, there are more professional approaches.

Thanks.

A guy on the internet doesn't get constructivism. More news at 11!

Constructivism is, in any of its manifestations, never a normative theory. Rather, it tries to describe how reality or certain concepts come about. Instead of saying that we should discard all notions of truth and try to construct reality/some concept in a certain way, it is a simple acknowledgement that our perception is socially mediated.It, of course, doesn't deny that there are two mushroom heads on the ground but rather it highlights that we view (i.e. construct) them as two mushrooms even though they are part of the same organism

> Ultimately the reason why he did it is because he could and I blame the nonexistent fact checking at Spiegel for this.

Are you sure about this?

There are editors in such publications, and editors have bias.

which is not to say you aren't right, but assuming this reason omits a whole can of far more unpleasant worms

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