Since its inception shortly after the war, The mirror the world holds up a mirror. As the news magazine published in 1962-secret information about the poor state of the Bundeswehr, accused the government of the blade of treason, let the editorial rooms of the browse and the editor of the magazine. The “Spiegel affair” led to mass demonstrations against police state measures, and created an important precedent for freedom of the press in the young democracy. Throughout its history, the weekly mirror, much like the Time magazine contributed to your best times to set the national Agenda.

In recent weeks, the Name of the magazine, however, has a new importance. The mirror is broken and reveals a very Ugly within the media landscape and of the German society.

On the 19. December explained to the magazine that the star reporter Claas Relotius in more than a dozen articles “was invented in great style” information. Relotius has been described as a kind of Teutonic cher, Stephen Glass, had swindled in the 1990s, once systematically The Republic. “I’m sick, and I have to help now,” said Relotius to his editorial. That may be true, but in his fall, it is more than an author with mental health problems.

debt lies not only with Relotius

One of the motives for his work, the alleged rudeness in America. In a Story he told the macabre story of a woman who travels through the country, and as a witness for executions. In another, he reported from the tragic fate of the Yemenis, which was set by the US military mistakenly in Guantanamo Bay, where they thought he was allegedly 14 years in solitary confinement and tortured (The Song, with the American soldiers in full volume on his cell sonicated, was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U. S. A.”). Both stories were made up.

And you can actually find easily. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the fact-Check section of the mirror is worked the largest in the world and even better than the widely praised Department of New York (2013 I for several months in a now defunct English-speaking Department of the mirror). A careful fact-checker would have at least once contacted the alleged execution, a tourist, in order to verify their existence. And the American authorities result in a very accurate book about the Guantanamo Bay Detainees. Nevertheless, Relotius’ inventions, escaped the close scrutiny of his colleagues.