For many years, the journalism I most warmed to was storytelling. A story is commonly understood to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In other words, it is is a construct, it doesn't represent the way things are but how our brains are able to understand them, what makes sense to us. It is fiction — for fiction we understand, reality we don't; it is too complicated.
Not so long ago (yet already pretty much forgotten), the German magazine Der Spiegel informed their readers that it had been misled. Claas Relotius, one of their most renowned reporters, who had been showered with journalism prizes, had for years invented stories. When a fellow reporter, Juan Moreno, became suspicious, he was initially not believed. Eventually, however, due to his persistence, the truth came out — and Der Spiegel had a credibility problem.
It's reaction was formidable: It laid open what it knew, invited critics to have their say — more transparency wasn't really imaginable. Then, however, I came across this, as far as I'm concerned, extremely stupid sentence: "Die meisten Reporter arbeiten absolut sauber, das muss hier noch einmal betont werden." (Most reporters work absolutely correctly, it needs to be stressed here once again). Well, this simply cannot be known. Moreover, it is the standard answer when the system should not be put into question.
The system? Journalism, I once learned, means to report things as they are, to tell it like it is. A noble endeavour, no doubt, yet rather difficult to practise for there is not one reality we can agree on, there are different versions of reality. It goes without saying that this is not a journalistic problem but a fact and a challenge for pretty much all disciplines. Just think of the law that requires judges to be impartial — the Kavanaugh nomination in the US once again made clear that in the real world this is nothing but a rather sick joke.
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