Winner Of CNN's 'Journalist Of The Year' Award Admits He Made Up Reports | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This informational nugget was sent to me by Ben Shapiro, who represents the Daily Wire, and since this is one of the most topical news events, it should be published on BCN.

    This post was written by Ryan Saavedra @REALSAAVEDRA.

    A recent winner of CNN's "Journalist of the Year" award has admitted to fabricating reports for years "on a grand scale" while at Der Spiegel, a German publication which warned other media organizations may have been affected.

    "Claas Relotius, a reporter and editor, falsified his articles on a grand scale and even invented characters, deceiving both readers and his colleagues," Der Spiegel reported. "This has been uncovered as a result of tips, internal research and, ultimately, a comprehensive confession by the editor himself."

    The publications said that suspicions grew after a November report by Relotius "about an American vigilante group that patrols the border between Mexico and the United States."

    A co-author on the report said that he observed Relotius' behavior and grew distrustful, then reported what happened, which led to the publication confronting him.

    "Claas Relotius committed his deception intentionally, methodically and with criminal intent," Der Spiegel continued. "For example, he included individuals in his stories who he had never met or spoken to, telling their stories or quoting them. Instead, he would reveal, he based the depictions on other media or video recordings. By doing so, he created composite characters of people who actually did exist but whose stories Relotius had fabricated. He also made up dialogue and quotes."

    The Wrap noted that Relotius, 33, "won a CNN Journalist of the Year award in 2014 in the best print category for the story 'Murderers as Carers,' published in the Swiss publication Reportagen."

    The Wrap added that CNN did not respond to a request for comment.

    A poll from earlier this year showed that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the media reports "fake news." Politico reported:

    More than 3-in-4 of 803 American respondents, or 77 percent, said they believe that major traditional television and newspaper media outlets report "fake news," according to a Monmouth University poll released Monday, marking a sharp increase in distrust of those news organizations from a year ago, when 63 percent registered concerns about the spread of misinformation.

    Among those, 31 percent said they believe those media outlets spread "fake news" regularly, and 46 percent said it happens occasionally.

    CNN - which is consistently ranked as the least trusted cable news network - has had to retract multiple false reports, which have seemingly all been negative toward President Donald Trump.

    In 2017, three CNN journalists who wrote a false report on Anthony Scaramucci all resigned from their positions after the network was forced to issue an embarrassing retraction.

    Last December, CNN reported another bombshell exclusive which they later had to retract. The Daily Wire reported:

    CNN's Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb reported the network's exclusive which was hyped as possibly the first evidence that Trump's campaign was given advanced notification about stolen documents from the Democrats - a report that appears to be plagued with key errors and which also misled by omitting the larger context of what really happened.

    The Washington Post was the first to report on the errors in CNN's report, which included making a crucial error in the timeline of events.

    CNN claimed that Trump Jr. was sent an email on September 4, 2016, from a person named Michael J. Erickson which included a link to WikiLeaks documents and a decryption key to access the purportedly stolen emails. The date CNN reported, however, was incorrect. The actual date of the email was September 14...

    ...The date is significant because it shows that Trump Jr. was sent documents from WikiLeaks that were already available to the public, which undermines the key premise of CNN's story that the Trump campaign was in cahoots with WikiLeaks to bring down the Clinton campaign.

     RELATED: BOMBSHELL: Lanny Davis Changes Story. CNN Caught In New Reporting Scandal.