Spiegel apologises in cover story on faked news scandal

German news weekly Der Spiegel publishes on Saturday a 23-page special report on how one of its award-winning reporters faked stories for years, dealing a blow to media credibility. Claas Relotius, 33, resigned after admitting to making up stories and inventing protagonists in more than a dozen articles in the magazine’s print and online editions.

The US ambassador to Germany on Friday called for an independent investigation in a letter to the weekly, pointing that many of the stories Relotius fabricated focussed on American life. Since the scandal revealed by the magazine on Wednesday, other mainstream German outlets such as Die Welt and Die Zeit which once used Relotius as a freelancer, have also begun pouring through articles that he wrote for them.

“Tell it like it is,” wrote Spiegel on its latest magazine cover page, an allusion to the publication’s motto by its founder Rudolf Augstein that also hangs at the entrance of its headquarters in Hamburg. In its editorial, the magazine said the scam, involving subjects including Syrian orphans and a Holocaust survivor, is the “worst thing that can happen to an editorial team”.