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Margreth Lünenborg, Débora Medeiros
Journalism as an affective institution.
Emotional labor and the discourse on fraud at Der Spiegel
SFB 1171 Working Paper 03 / 20
Berlin 2020 – ISSN 2509-3827
SFB 1171 Affective Societies – Working Paper 03/20
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Zitationsangabe für diesen Beitrag
Lünenborg, M., Medeiros, D. (2020). Journalism as an affective institution. Emotional labor and the
discourse on fraud at Der Spiegel. Working Paper SFB 1171 Affective Societies 03/20.
Static URL: https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/17614
Working Paper ISSN 2509-3827
Diese Publikation wurde gefördert von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
Sonderforschungsbereich 1171
Affective Societies
Freie Universität Berlin
Habelschwerdter Allee 45
14195 Berlin
E-Mail: office@sfb1171.de
SFB 1171 Affective Societies – Working Paper 03/20
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Journalism as an affective institution
Emotional labor and the discourse on fraud at Der Spiegel
Margreth Lünenborg, Débora Medeiros
17.12.2020
Abstract
This paper explores the underlying aspects surrounding emotional labor in everyday life inside news-
rooms and how these aspects contribute to discursively (de)stabilize journalism as an institution. In
order to do this, we apply the literature on affect and emotion in journalism as well as on discursive
institutionalism to the analysis of a particular moment of crisis: the fraud scandal around Claas Relotius,
an award-winning German reporter for the news magazine Der Spiegel. The discovery of his massive
fake feature stories caused a fierce and controversial discussion on the media about structural problems
in journalism as well as the use of emotion in feature stories and exclusion mechanisms inside the news-
room. In our textual analysis of 138 articles on this case published in German and selected international
media between December 2018 and December 2019, we uncovered four main areas in which the role
of emotions is discursively negotiated (1) Form: feature stories and their use of emotions, (2) Actor:
emotional attributions to Relotius, (3) Practice: emotions as part of editorial practices, understood here
as emotional labor in the newsroom, and (4) Institution: the description of the event and its affective
implications for journalism as a whole.
Introduction
On 19 December 2018, the German news magazine Der Spiegel revealed that its
award-winning reporter, Claas Relotius, had been publishing massive forgeries in the
magazine for eight years. This revelation stirred extensive debate in German and in-
ternational media about Der Spiegel’s responsibilities and mistakes, and about the con-
sequences for both Der Spiegel and for journalism as an institution more broadly. His
fraud is part of a “history of media faking” (Leigh, 2019, p. 162) that has consistently
involved highly respected media organizations. However, the shock articulated in this
debate drew its intensity from far-right accusations raised against legacy media under
the term “lying press” (Haller & Holt, 2019). Over the past years trust in journalism as
an institution has been put into doubt (Krämer, 2018). Journalism as a profession has
seen a lowered standard of working conditions and a rise of precarious freelance work.
Yet the fraud case at Der Spiegel seems to point to the opposite direction. Relotius was
one of the most privileged actors in the field of journalism in terms of working condi-
tions, salary and reputation. In contrast, it was Juan Moreno, a freelance reporter work-
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ing with Relotius on a story, who finally revealed the fraud despite the head of depart-
ment’s resistance. As a son of Spanish immigrants, he felt like an outsider in the news-
room (Moreno, 2019). As a freelancer, his insistence on the disclosure put him at per-
sonal risk.
While some analysis has been done on ethical or linguistic issues of the fakes (e.g.
Heinecke, 2019), we are interested in how emotions become visible here. Rooted in
more recent research on the “turn to affect and emotion in media and communication
studies” (Lünenborg & Maier, 2018) as well as in journalism studies (Wahl-Jorgensen
2019), we focus on the ways journalism as an institution is established, challenged and
contested in relation to emotions in the coverage of Relotius’ frauds.
Media discourse about the fraud primarily focused on practices of fact-checking,
and on the need for objective, fact-based news. However, under the surface of this
focus on facts, it is possible to detect indications for adequate ways to perform emo-
tions as a journalist and in journalistic work. In our analysis, we distinguish emotional
labor in journalism on four areas: (1) journalistic forms, (2) journalists as actors, (3)
work in the newsroom, and (4) finally, journalism as an institution. To understand how
journalism as an institution is established and challenged affectively, we will analyze
the discourse around emotions and affect in the fraud scandal of Relotius and Der
Spiegel.
We start with a short overview of the role of affect and emotion in public commu-
nication, contextualized by emotion theory in the social sciences and by affect studies
in the humanities. We link this literature with ongoing debates on neo-institutionalism.
We then turn to our specific case study, presenting the significance of the news maga-
zine Der Spiegel in the German media system and briefly outlining the series of occur-
rences.
Journalism, Affect and Emotion
We understand affect and emotions through a relational lens. Affect constitutes “a dy-
namic building block, potentially transgressing normatively prescribed and learned
ways of relating to the world” (von Scheve & Slaby, 2019, pp. 44–45). Emotions are
“episodic realizations of affect” (von Scheve & Slaby, 2019, p. 46) that individuals can
label through culturally and historically established categories such as anger, fear or
joy. As affect circulates, bodies and objects become involved in a process of both af-
fecting each other and being affected by each other. At the same time, the act of pin-
SFB 1171 Affective Societies – Working Paper 03/20
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pointing an affect as a known emotion may also lead to an intensification of the expe-
rience. Thus, emotional reflexivity as a contemporary social technique is increasingly
valued and includes the ability to bring emotions, as a structure of the social, more
strongly into focus.
For the current study, we zoom in on two particular forms of circulation of affect
and emotion: feeling rules and emotional labor, which are strongly connected. Follow-
ing Hochschild’s (1979) concept of feeling rules, Pantti and Wahl-Jorgensen (2011, p.
108) discuss how “media work as a bridge between personal and public emotions: (…)
personal emotions become public, and public emotions in turn shape personal emo-
tions.” As a mediated form of communication, journalism, thus, establishes feeling
rules for society while its own relation to emotions stays ambivalent. This places jour-
nalists at permanent contradiction between their field’s normative expectations, which
include emotional distance towards events, and the role that journalism plays in medi-
ating emotions in the public sphere as a specific type of emotional labor.
Studies have focused on journalists’ strategies for managing this contradiction as
well as their own emotions while performing their work. These strategies reveal some
of the feeling rules established in the journalistic field. For instance, when dealing with
interview partners, journalists must be empathetic in order to establish a trusting rela-
tionship – without, at the same time, violating professional standards. In addition, re-
search shows that many journalists consider the coverage of emotions necessary for an
adequate representation of reality (Pantti, 2010). However, they are also wary of losing
credibility if their public or colleagues consider their use of emotions in the coverage
to be excessive or sensationalist (Richards & Rees, 2011). In this sense, they perform
a type of emotional labor towards fellow journalists, regulating how much emotion
makes it into their reports (Rosas, 2018). One strategy journalists employ in order to
maintain their professional claims of emotional distance while producing their cover-
age is source selection that privileges “citizens’ emotional responses” (Pantti & Wahl-
Jorgensen, 2011, p. 116) to events. This way, journalists relegate the emotions in a
story to the quoted sources. This may also lead to specific dynamics inside the news-
room, as for instance journalists’ own experiences with trauma while covering events
such as war and natural disasters are far less discussed in newsrooms than sources’
emotions (Richards & Rees, 2011).
The studies we have described so far focus mostly on journalists’ emotional labor
in the context of crisis reporting. However, the case we analyze reveals another aspect
of emotional labor that is performed in everyday life inside the newsroom. We argue
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that journalists carry out emotional labor as they interact with each other through quo-
tidian negotiations around work routines inside their organization. Based on practice
theory (Reckwitz, 2002), we understand human agency and social structures as mutu-
ally constituted. Thus, the doings and sayings of journalists rely on their personal em-
bodied competences, as well as on the socioeconomic and technical resources of the
newsroom and the media company. With a focus on the everyday, practice theory is
centered on how actors use shared knowledge in their symbolic organization of reality.
Journalists use incorporated and implicit knowledge to perform their work success-
fully, and this knowledge in turn becomes part of the established practices accepted or
even praised by their colleagues. With the analytic ‘turn to affect’, more attention has
been paid to the affective dimension of social practices. As Reckwitz points out: “every
social order as a set of practices is a specific order of affects” (Reckwitz, 2017, p. 116,
italics by the author). Relying on Wetherell (2012), we thus understand affect and
emotions as integral parts of any kind of social practice. We use such an understanding
to identify how emotions become relevant to the building of social order in the news-
room and in journalism more generally. Scholarship on new institutionalism helps us
understand the relation between practices, discourses and social institutions.
Understanding Journalism as an Institution
New institutionalism is an approach that defines institutions “in terms of informal rou-
tines, scripts, rules, or guidelines for behavior that span across organizations” (Ryfe,
2006, p. 136). As such, it is a promising path towards better understanding how jour-
nalism reacts and adapts to challenges. By considering institutions’ embeddedness in
a broader cultural, economic and political context, it becomes visible how organiza-
tional routines and rules reflect the norms of societies (Kaplan, 2006, p. 173-174) as
well as how various actors provoke or resist institutional change.
While there are a variety of approaches subsumed under new institutionalism
1
, in
this study, we draw in particular on discursive institutionalism, emphasizing actors’
agency in “processes of negotiation, conflict and contestation” (Mackay, Kenny, Chap-
pell, 2010, p. 575). Institutions here are understood as based on norms and meaning
systems. As such, they focus on the circulation of ideas through discourse inside and
beyond an institution. It is through this interactive process that actors negotiate insti-
tutional change (Hanitzsch & Vos, 2017, p. 120). Discourse maintains the tension be-
1
For an overview of the main theoretical strands, see Schmidt (2010) as well as Mackay et al. (2010).
SFB 1171 Affective Societies – Working Paper 03/20
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tween stability and change. Actors can reflect critically about the institutions they in-
tegrate by communicating and deliberating about them, in order to convince them-
selves and other actors to enact change inside institutions (Schmidt, 2010, p. 16).
Applying new institutionalism to journalism allows us to focus on the rules and
practices that both limit and enable the news-making process. Journalism’s institu-
tional character can be observed in the fact that very different and often competing
newsrooms still implement similar rules and routines, even if these would seem to run
counter to market interests (Cook, 2006, p. 162). However, there is no static set of
rules. Rather, actors continuously negotiate them through discourse. Such negotiations
reveal the journalistic institution’s dynamic character, since the “logic of appropriate-
ness” that permeates rules and practices “is subject to discursive (re)creation, (re)in-
terpretation, appropriation, and contestation” (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017, p. 121).
Therefore, it makes sense to talk about the continuous process of (de-)institutionaliza-
tion that marks journalism.
Connecting the scholarship on affect and emotions to new institutionalism, we un-
derstand feeling rules and journalists’ emotional labor as an important part of the on-
going negotiations and cultural consensus forming journalism as an institution. In our
research, we focus on the discursive negotiations happening inside the journalistic
field, while also reflecting on the relationship between journalism and society at large.
Current challenges to journalism cannot be fully understood by focusing on the internal
dynamics of the journalistic field alone, as they pertain to broader processes. These
processes include the increasing precarization of various economic sectors, including
the media industry (Deuze & Witschge, 2018, p. 176). They also include digitalization,
which for journalism means a higher diversity of media sources to challenge legacy
media’s interpretation of events and gatekeeping capabilities (Bennett and Livingston,
2018, p. 128). There are also political processes, such as the rise of far-right actors,
whose discourse strongly relies on distrust towards legacy media and on disinfor-
mation strategies (Krämer, 2018, p. 138).
A particularly relevant development that reflects this broader context is that publics
are becoming increasingly complex due to the convergence of legacy media and per-
sonalized networks of communication in social media. This poses a direct challenge to
journalism’s interpretative functions, giving rise to “an ongoing struggle” among com-
peting elements of “tone, modality, volume, and dominance of speakers in a given
public” (Lünenborg, 2020, p. 34). This, in turn, questions the Habermasian division
between public and private communication, since both modes of articulation collapse
into the same (mostly digital and networked) space. In order to capture this complexity,
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we propose the concept of affective publics, which considers the performative, net-
worked nature of current public communication, and overcomes the division between
rationality and emotion in the deliberative model of the public sphere. Affective pub-
lics include “modes of relational interaction among citizens and between citizens and
(digital media) technology” (Lünenborg, 2020, p. 30-31). We consider how these
modes relate to journalists’ boundary work, as they discursively interact with audi-
ences’ demands on journalism as an institution, and the changes this can lead to in
journalists’ internalized professional roles (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017, p. 125-126), thus
integrating the perspectives provided both by discursive institutionalism and field the-
ory.
Journalists are largely expected to act autonomously, i.e. to define and enforce their
own rules and practices (Benson, 2006, p. 189). Communicating journalism’s autono-
mous character to the public and to other social actors becomes central to “produc[ing]
the symbolic boundaries of journalism and news practice” (Hanitzsch et al., 2019, p.
33).
Journalism as an institution is dynamically constituted and challenged through
three levels of boundary work: actors (Who is a journalist and who is not?), forms
(What characterizes a piece of journalism?), and practices (What does a journalist do?).
Understanding journalism’s boundary work as dynamic allows us to analyze transfor-
mations over time as a “discursive struggle between competing views toward journal-
ism’s identity and position in society” (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017, p. 130).
This struggle also takes place when journalists employ textual forms and style con-
ventions culturally connected to journalism in a specific society. These textual forms
arm journalists with the authority to provide reliable information, as the public cannot
verify whether events really did transpire as covered (Schudson, 1982).
Claas Relotius seemed to perform his work in a way that contributed to asserting
journalism’s boundaries, especially through his writing of feature stories. This brought
him wide recognition in the field, as reflected in the many journalistic prizes he won,
another tool for boundary work and production of symbolic capital (Hanitzsch et
al., 2019, p. 30). However, he broke the essential rule that reporting must be truthful.
We analyze the coverage of the scandal around Relotius’ fabrications as a case that
lends insight into how journalism, as a discursive institution, is self-reflexively chal-
lenged in a moment of crisis. In particular, our analysis focuses on how affect and
SFB 1171 Affective Societies – Working Paper 03/20
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emotion shape discursive negotiations that lead to changes in journalism as an institu-
tion. Before we present our findings, some background information on the German
media landscape is necessary.
The Relotius Scandal
Germany’s high level of press freedom is protected by constitutional guarantees and
an independent justice system. However, the country’s media landscape also faces se-
rious challenges. These include decreasing levels of media diversity, heightened pre-
carity for freelancers, and an escalation of verbal and physical attacks against individ-
ual journalists (RSF, 2020). Moreover, far-right actors have increasingly targeted jour-
nalists, particularly since the ascension of the far-right movement PEGIDA in 2015,
fueled by a discourse that combines the historically authoritarian term “lying press”
with conspiracy theories around legacy media (Haller & Holt, 2019). Against this
background, Der Spiegel, Germany’s widest circulating weekly news magazine, faced
a major challenge to its credibility after its star reporter Claas Relotius admitted to
having faked various feature stories.
On December 19, 2018, Der Spiegel dedicated the cover of its print magazine to
the Relotius scandal, apologizing to its readers and announcing a rigid investigation of
the case (Der Spiegel, 2018a). Der Spiegel’s famous fact-checking unit and profes-
sional proofreading had failed to uncover a variety of mistakes and lies. These facts
had only become public through the persistent research of Relotius' colleague Juan
Moreno. Moreno fought tenaciously against his editors to bring attention to his doubts
about the working methods of the "faithful Claas" (Moreno, 2019), as he later de-
scribed in a detailed report on his research. Further investigation revealed that, of Re-
lotius’ 60 stories published in the magazine, a substantial part contained mistakes.
These ranged from inaccuracies to false statements, and from invented locations and
descriptions to wholly fictional actors and completely made up stories. An external
commission was appointed to examine the case. In May 2019, they delivered a report
describing in detail how substantial negligence of professional structures resulted from
naïve trust in the young successful reporter, failing professional standards of fact-
checking, and an editorial climate privileging the Society beat and separating it from
the rest of the newsroom (Der Spiegel, 2019).
After delivering some pieces to Der Spiegel as a freelancer starting in 2011, Relo-
tius gained a staff position as an editor and reporter at the magazine in 2017. He thus
became part of the Society beat, an editorial unit responsible for feature stories. As a
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freelancer, he published for various other media outlets, and won, throughout his ca-
reer, 19 journalism prizes. His feature stories, mostly from abroad, were based on clas-
sical forms of storytelling, in-depth introspection of characters, and dualist structures
of hero and villain. His work was praised by a jury for its "unprecedented lightness,
density and relevance, which never leaves its sources undisclosed” (SZ, 2018b), a
statement that became cynical after the falsification came to light.
The scandal triggered an extensive and critical debate on trust in journalism. Most
of this discourse became visible in journalism itself – a self-reflexive view of the field
that Carlson (2016) called “meta-journalistic discourse”. We understand this discourse
as part of journalism’s current boundary work and as such an element of ongoing dis-
cursive institutionalization.
Method
National and regional media covered the Relotius scandal widely in the weeks follow-
ing the first pieces in Der Spiegel. The publication of the internal investigation report
in May 2019 (Der Spiegel, 2019) caused another – yet significantly lower – peak of
media coverage. One year after the scandal, several media used the anniversary as an
institutionalized form of memory work to revisit the topic and reflect on its long-term
consequences.
We understand the scandal coverage as part of an institutional discourse, including
actors with differing “discursive abilit[ies] to shape public conversations about jour-
nalism’s identity and position in society” (Hanitzsch & Vos, 2017, p. 122). We chose
the sample for our analysis by focusing on those with the most “discursive power”
(ibid.). In addition to the reporting in Der Spiegel itself, our material includes print and
online contributions by the German national daily and weekly newspapers Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), die tageszeitung (taz), Die Welt,
Bild, Die Zeit as well as specialist media reporting on journalism and media (Kress,
Meedia, Übermedien, telepolis, Salonkolumnisten). The national newspapers cover a
wide spectrum of political positions, including liberal (SZ), conservative (FAZ, Welt)
as well as moderate left (taz), and broadsheets as well as a tabloid paper (Bild). For
international reporting, New York Times, Washington Post and the Swiss national pa-
per Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) were taken into account.
We examined three periods: (1) immediately after the fraud became known (De-
cember 19, 2018 to March 30, 2019), (2) following the publication of Der Spiegel’s
investigation report (May 24, 2019 to May 31, 2019), and one year after the fraud
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scandal (November/December 2019) as a form of memory work and reflection on last-
ing consequences. A total of 138 articles form the basis of our analysis
2
.
The analysis of this corpus was organized as textual analysis with a special focus
on the articulation and discursive construction of emotion and affect. Textual analysis
describes “a type of qualitative analysis beyond the manifest content of media, [which]
focuses on the underlying ideological and cultural assumptions of the text. Text is un-
derstood as a complex set of discursive strategies that is situated in a special cultural
context” (Fürsich, 2009, p. 240). Based on this tradition of critical cultural analysis,
we read the texts as articulations of journalists reflecting on their own position and
institutional power in society. As such, we are interested in how journalism reflects
and (re)produces the conditions of its authority in a moment of crisis.
To address our interest in the emotional and affective dimensions of this discourse,
we employ the interdisciplinary approach of “Reading for Affect” (Berg et al. 2019).
This approach “foregrounds affective phenomena as a hermeneutic lens, capitalizing
on affect and emotion as sensitizing concepts in the interpretation of discourse” (p.
51). The authors build on existing work on emotion in language as developed by
Reddy’s (2001) concept of ‘emotives’, which he defines as “specific forms of speech
acts that do not simply have emotions as referents but are performatives that ‘do things
to the world’” (Berg et al. 2019, p. 47). Adding to this performative understanding,
they argue for extended access including (1) the attribution of “emotion words” to spe-
cific actors, (2) forms of emotion-based linguistic collectivization and (3) the materi-
ality of discourse itself (Berg et al., 2019, p. 51). “Emotion words” refers to the use of
emotional terms to describe persons. We use this approach to look for the emotional
description of journalists, whether as individual journalists (especially Relotius) or as
journalists more broadly. Looking for linguistic collectivization allows us to identify
the construction of emotion-based groups in the discourse, e.g. readers or star report-
ers. The materiality of discourse becomes a subject of analysis when we look for sty-
listic forms of hyperbole or linguistic excess in the description of the event.
These methodological tools enable us to analyze the material alongside our research
question:
How does the discourse around emotions and affect in the Relotius scandal contribute
to (de)stabilize journalism as an institution?
2
A complete list of articles cited as well as a table with the amount of selected articles per media in the
overall material are included at the end of the article.
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To answer this question, we take a detailed look at these four areas: (1) How are emo-
tions produced and staged in forms of storytelling? (2) How are journalists as actors
expected to perform feeling rules as part of their professional role? (3) How does emo-
tional labor in the newsroom play out to establish an affective community? (4) How is
journalism as an institution in crisis discussed and (re)produced affectively?
In the next section, we present the answers our analysis provides to these questions,
drawing on the Relotius case as an example of how journalism as an institution is
grounded in affect and emotions.
The Relotius scandal: Form, Actor, Practice, and Journalism as an Institution
It was striking to observe how intensely emotions and affect were either explicitly
mentioned or indirectly referred to in our material. Our systematization made this even
clearer. By distinguishing different areas of attribution, we identified four aspects: (1)
Form: feature stories and their use of emotions, understood here as emotional labor in
storytelling and its partly conflictive relation to the notion of objectivity, (2) Actor:
emotional attributions to Claas Relotius, (3) Practice: emotions as part of editorial
practices, understood here as emotional labor in the newsroom, and (4) Institution: the
description of the event and its affective implications for journalism as a whole.
We will first describe in detail how these four aspects are negotiated in the media
coverage, and then consider how they (de)stabilize journalism as an institution.
Form: Emotions in Feature Stories
Relotius' articles were particularly praised for their narrative style, their dense descrip-
tion of intimate details, and their empathetic treatment of vulnerable protagonists.
However, many of these details and protagonists turned out to be fictional. Relotius
aimed to generate emotions, first among his colleagues and later among his readers. A
Der Spiegel colleague tried to put this effect into words: “I can't remember the last
time I was so moved by a text. Unbearably strong text” (Der Spiegel, 2019, p. 132).
This manner of producing emotions through journalism is heavily discussed in the
coverage of the event. While traditionally such a focus on emotions is considered to
be part of tabloid journalism, the fraud scandal offers an opportunity to switch these
roles. Germany’s biggest tabloid Bild, quoting the communication scholar Hans Ma-
thias Kepplinger, jumps at the chance: “The information contained in the fake stories
is near zero. They sell emotion instead of information” (Bild, 2018).
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Here we find the traditional dichotomist structure of fact versus emotion, equiva-
lent to journalism versus fiction writing. It is not the fraud that is seen as the main
problem, but the concentration on a form of storytelling that immerses readers into
individual characters and their feelings. Beyond the Relotius case, some actors in the
field argue that storytelling techniques often attempt to overcome contradictions that
cannot be easily explained. In this vein, one op-ed author attributed a “tranquilizing
effect” to the way combining fact and fiction simplifies complex realities in storytell-
ing, “stabilize[s] feelings and bring[s] order into chaos” (Die Zeit, 2018a). On the other
hand, many reporters defended their use of storytelling in feature stories, arguing that
this format fulfills an important function in journalism, since it “connects facts with
feeling (…) [and] tries to make tangible what the facts only describe” (Die Zeit,
2018c).
Debates about feature story writing in journalism have a long tradition, from muck-
rakers to new journalism. The coverage of the scandal was marked by competing at-
tempts to draw a precise line between describing reality and composing reality itself.
A former editor wrote: "When I worked for Der Spiegel (…), the Society beat had a
reputation for not overdoing a love of truth when in doubt. It certainly didn't mean
fraud and fabrications, but condensations, exaggerations, creative freedom. (…) The
most important goal is to tell the best possible, densest, most inspiring story, not nec-
essarily the most accurate one” (Übermedien, 2018). The goal described in this quote
is to commodify affect and emotion in journalism, as the CEO of the Springer publish-
ing house, Matthias Döpfner, mentioned: “Relotius delivered a product that was de-
sired, and no doubt not only by Der Spiegel" (NZZ, 2019a).
Journalists’ expectations about what constitutes a great feature story also aided Re-
lotius’ success. Regarding the fabricated story of a young boy who started the Syrian
war by spraying graffiti on the wall, Übermedien wrote: “It is a story journalists dream
of. Because it is emotional, dramatic, relevant. And because it seems like an incredible
piece of contemporary history” (Übermedien, 2019a).
In addition, journalists and the publics’ expectations about reality itself are another
aspect in the discussion. Reflections around how Relotius’ US stories fed the European
imaginary of the country, for example, are prominent in the material. The Washington
Post wrote about Relotius’ piece on the Minnesota town Fergus Falls: “(…) he deliv-
ered the editors' expected portrait of a place populated by openly bigoted yokels”
(Washington Post, 2018).
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As a foreign correspondent, Relotius’ fraud seemed to confirm the biases of his
peers and audiences back home, not only towards the US. As an article in Die Zeit
summarized it, Relotius’ stories “provided shivers and delight, as they contained ex-
actly the clichés (…) that everyone suspected in the audience” (Die Zeit, 2018a).
Charlotte Wiedemann, a foreign correspondent writing on Muslim societies in the
global South, noted that these expectations are embedded in a broader context of prej-
udices rooted in colonialism: “What needs did Claas Relotius’ fraud meet? (…) Where
does falsehood border on common legend when the white eye turns to other cultures?”
Some reports, she wrote sharply, "satisfy (...) the rather white desire to suffer from the
evil world, without consequences, without responsibility. It's bad out there" (taz,
2019b). She argued for exercising cautious restraint towards journalists’ claims of hav-
ing immersed themselves in the inner lives of complete strangers. Instead she identified
news stories that try to reduce complex entanglements to personal stories as insuffi-
cient. Her analysis adds an important aspect to the critical self-reflection of journal-
ism's objectivity norm, which is instrumental in obscuring global inequalities of
knowledge production by claiming to provide non-situated knowledge, while in fact
remaining mostly in the perspective of the white, powerful observer.
Feature stories are susceptible to fraud as they rely on personal observation and
individual experience. Schudson introduced the idea “that the power of the media lies
not only (…) in its power to declare things to be true, but in its power to provide the
forms in which the declarations appear” (Schudson, 1982, 98). However, the stability
of a number of formats that developed over centuries - among them the news - has
given way to the diversification of ‘contingent hybrids.’ In turn, this diversification
process has led to the ongoing re-signification of established conventions, in an attempt
to defend journalism’s authority to deliver valid interpretations of reality (Lünenborg,
2017). Storytelling in feature stories is one of these hybrid forms, using dramaturgical
rules from fictional writing and alternating between literature and journalism. It com-
bines description with analysis, and subjective introspection with fact-based scrutiny.
The immersive quality that marks feature stories, including immersion into the feel-
ings of the reporter and protagonists, raises questions about the epistemic character of
journalistic knowledge production. Beyond a naïve understanding of truth by the trans-
mission of facts only, feature stories address the question of positioned knowledge,
always relying on the observer’s position and his or her ability and willingness to share
the conditions and limitations of such observation. Emotions are a core element of this
form. These can include the emotions of the reporter in an unexpected situation, the
emotions of the protagonists, and indeed, the emotions triggered in the readers. Using
SFB 1171 Affective Societies – Working Paper 03/20
14
immersive techniques of storytelling, journalists practice the “strategic ritual of emo-
tionality” (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2012).
This use of emotions became the subject of extensive journalistic debate and criti-
cism, as it was prevalent in both Relotius' storytelling and in Der Spiegel's own cover-
age of the scandal. The field’s reactions when Der Spiegel used a style similar to Re-
lotius’ own style to uncover the fraud in one of its first online pieces were not just
positive. An example of this is the reaction to a personalized story on Claas Relotius
by his colleague Fichtner, which depicted Relotius as the bad guy betraying Germany’s
most important newsmagazine (Der Spiegel, 2018b). This depiction was the object of
heavy disagreement, as one author wrote: "And as he writes his former colleague into
immeasurable depths, he overestimates his own magazine. (...) Fichtner then drives
self-elevation to extremes through demonstrative, record-breaking throwing himself at
our feet. (...) The apparent attempt to unsparingly investigate becomes such vain, sticky
glop.” (Übermedien, 2018). Here, the journalistic field no longer accepts the strategic
use of emotion – visible as exaggerated humility – as authentic.
Some actors also noticed a positivist turn in the whole discussion: “You play beauty
and truth against each other as if to will the positivism controversy of the 1970s into
journalism again" (Kress 2019b). Against this trend, authors argued for a return to
stricter reporting methods and transparency towards readers, in order to prevent further
fabrications. Yet they also recommended embracing the reporters’ subjectivity as a
way to capture reality’s nuances more accurately. Often, this argument is embedded in
comparisons between Relotius’ representation of emotions in his stories, seen as too
perfect, and the work of excellent reporters in history. Unlike Relotius, it is argued, the
latter were empathetic while acknowledging their own limitations: “They articulate
their own biases, expose insightfully their own perplexity, astonishment and (…) in-
comprehension” (SZ, 2019).
The debate around feature stories as a genre proves to be complex. It is permeated
not only by aspects pertaining to journalistic techniques, but also by journalists’ vari-
ous understandings of the role emotions should play in feature stories and in the re-
porters’ interactions with the world. Relotius is presented as employing forbidden
methods of fabrication in order to appeal to audiences and peers by perfectly confirm-
ing their biases. The emotional labor he performed when writing his pieces had a “tran-
quilizing” function, reassuring readers that they were right all along. As the next sec-
tion will show, this stark perception of Relotius as an over-simplifier was not so pre-
dominant before his fabrications emerged. How other actors perceived him seems to
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15
have contributed strongly to his peers’ shocked reactions when they discovered that he
had violated the field’s (feeling) rules for so long.
Actor: Emotional Attributions to Relotius
Barely an article in the first weeks after the scandal went without mentioning Claas
Relotius’ modesty. This impression was enhanced through the contrast between his
modesty and Der Spiegel reporters’ well-established image. Relotius was described
here as an exception: "Claas Relotius (33) is actually a nice person, a dream colleague:
Without conceit, which is not always strange to Der Spiegel reporters, without arro-
gance, rather a little introspective" (Kress, 2018). This appealing modesty – or more
precisely, the impression of modesty he left on the observer – seems to have lent Re-
lotius a special credibility which, combined with the news magazine's institutional
weight, enabled him to remain credible even when confronted with critical interven-
tions.
Although he was always described as “nice and friendly” (Spiegel, 2019, p. 132)
he intervened persistently to avoid critical letters to the editor and critical questions
about his stories from becoming public – and was successful for years. Moreno, who
eventually managed to prove Relotius’ fraud, summarized the situation later in an in-
terview: "On one hand, you have the nicest colleague on earth (…), as everyone I
talked to described him. On the other hand, you have me, someone behaving kind of
strangely" (SZ, 2018a). Through his distrust of Relotius, Moreno became an outlier in
the general perception of his peers. This becomes clearer in the description contained
in Der Spiegel’s final investigation report of the relationship between Relotius and his
bosses as being “marked by absolute confidence, partly admiration” (Spiegel, 2019, p.
132).
The strong focus on Claas Relotius’ personality in the coverage of the scandal re-
flects broader trends in journalism towards personalization (Van Aelst et al., 2012).
Interestingly, these very trends were also criticized in some of the debates about Relo-
tius’ writing style, such as his reduction of structural issues to a story about an individ-
ual. The contrast between Relotius’ actions and the emotions his colleagues projected
onto him can also be seen in the broader context of the Spiegel newsroom.
Practice: Emotional Labor in the Newsroom
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16
The external commission’s meticulous reconstruction of the case not only uncovered
details about errors in decision-making and failures in fact-checking, but also revealed
the emotional structure within the organization as such. The editorial office can be
understood as an “affective community” (Zink, 2019) that organizes its social order
through forms of inclusion and exclusion. This becomes obvious in the statements the
commission collected among reporters and editors, as well as in criticisms from wider
media discourse on the case
Relotius was part of the Society beat, which was endowed with privileges inside a
magazine that already had a reputation for housing big egos. “Reporters’ privileges
were extensive: opulent salaries, exemption from compulsory subjects, all travel op-
tions, if necessary foreign posts of your choice - trivialities of everyday life took place
elsewhere" (taz, 2019a). Coverage of the affair portrayed the closed community of
star reporters as “real men’s business” (taz, 2019a) where members performed their
virility and vanity. Involuntarily, one of the editors reproduced this image when de-
scribing the team’s arrival to the newsroom as a hostile conquest: “We came in here
like Israel came into the Arab territories and immediately had a six-day war" (Der
Spiegel, 2019, p. 140).
The privileged position of the Society beat stirred envy and caused conflicts. The
final report noted that “hatred for the department had grown ever stronger” (ibid., p.
140). Members of the beat explicitly refused otherwise established forms of coopera-
tion and peer-control. Practices based on informal arrangements distinguishing the in-
ner group from the rest of the newsroom trumped professional rules of fact-checking
and proofreading. Media discourse described the situation sharply: “(…) an esprit de
corps flourished that is unparalleled in German journalism. Accordingly, the authors,
especially the male ones, presented themselves as knowing, sublime, untouchable”
(taz, 2019a).
Rather than correcting mistakes, emotional bonding within the team was priori-
tized, as in the following report about loyalty: "A documentarian told the Commission
that it was unusual to snitch on sloppy colleagues" (Der Spiegel, 2019, p. 142). Star
reporters’ authority, widely asserted in the field through prizes and recognition from
the bosses, seemed to both intimidate and fascinate fact-checkers into not doing their
work: “And then fact-checkers are expected to interrogate such stars? To call every
person quoted in the story? In theory, yes; in practice you trust the author, who is part
of the team and has contributed to increasing the magazine’s reputation” (Die Zeit,
2018b).
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17
The extraordinarily privileged conditions within the team result in sharp boundaries
to the outside. Thus, the reaction to Juan Moreno’s revelations was „slow and errone-
ous, characterized by trust towards Relotius and distrust against Moreno” (Der Spiegel,
2019, p. 134). The information Moreno delivered was not handled as a severe problem
but as bickering between a freelancer and the young star in the editorial office. In this
conflict, the power of feeling rules to define and justify social status and hierarchy
becomes obvious. The responsible editor even chose the script of a genre film to artic-
ulate his mistrust: "I also told him [Juan Moreno] because of his sometimes pretty
sleazy threats, more or less literally: Juan, honestly, you sound like a character from a
mafia movie right now” (Der Spiegel, 2019, p. 136).
In sum, the editorial team appears in the coverage as an affective community, char-
acterized by corporal spirit and male virility. It establishes its own feeling rules, with
an emphasis on loyalty, pride and exceptionality and based on rigid boundaries towards
other teams that are considered inferior. Both Der Spiegel’s internal report and other
media’s coverage of the scandal provide valuable insights into how actors perform
emotional labor in everyday life inside the newsroom. This emotional labor is central
to structuring working relationships and routines, yet, as our case study reveals, these
structures are mostly intuitive, not explicitly discussed.
It is important to understand how these mechanisms unfold within the daily routine
of the newsroom, and how they shape the way the journalistic field handles different
forms of social and cultural capital. Doing so may provide a new perspective on the
circulation of affect and emotions inside organizations and in the journalistic field as
a whole. An understanding of how such affect circulates is critical to showing how
journalism as an institution negotiates its social function with regard to other institu-
tions. The next section shows how the scandal around Relotius connects Der Spiegel
as an organization to journalism as an institution, as journalists react to this affective
event.
Institution: Journalism’s Crisis as an Affective Event
“This house is shaken” (Der Spiegel 2018a). This was the opening sentence of Der
Spiegel’s editorial about the scandal in its own ‘house’. NZZ (2019b) declared the
“shock to the institutional doctrine of faith. (…) The dogma of infallibility is gone.”
Shock, shake and vibration are notions used in many of the articles published on the
scandal, seen as causing “a mix of incredulity, horror and surprise” (Übermedien,
2019b).
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18
The use of ‘shock’ and ‘shaking’ as terms to describe the crisis refers explicitly to
affective experiences. The organization Der Spiegel and, more broadly, the institution
of journalism, are described as a body shaken by external influences. Loss of stability
and reduced power are direct effects. At the same time, some actors in the field saw
this as an ideal moment to settle old scores with the magazine, as an author summa-
rizes: “Envy, collegial malice, uncertainty, legitimate criticism – all this comes up in
this muddled debate” (Die Zeit, 2018c). However, actors considered that the scandal
not only affected Der Spiegel, but also brought the very institution of journalism under
attack: “No one should say ‘this would not have happened to us.’ (…) Humility is
required of us all” (Die Welt, 2019). This quote already reflects one of the solutions
proposed: a humble mea culpa from German journalists and media houses, in which
they get to the bottom of the scandal and return to traditional reporting standards, re-
gaining the public’s trust.
Another overarching discourse arises in the face of escalating attacks against leg-
acy media on the part of far-right actors. According to this discourse, the Relotius affair
provides these actors with an opportunity to question journalism’s social function. The
concerns were expressed in statements, such as that by German journalist Ines Pohl,
who predicted: “Trump and populists everywhere will be popping the corks" (NYT,
2018). Often, reports directly quoted German far-right politicians or Trump supporters
that refer to the case as justifying their media criticism.
However, such far-right discourses are not the only threat to journalism’s institu-
tional credibility. With its massive coverage driven by affect, journalism itself pro-
duces the affective intensity shaking its own institutional foundations. Three months
after the scandal was revealed, actors criticized this dynamic: “Anyone who reads hun-
dreds of articles on the Causa Relotius is depressed, suspects the worst and prepares
for the downfall of journalism: So much turmoil! So much excitement! So much mock-
ery and envy and malice!” (Kress, 2019a). However, there were also optimistic voices
in the debate, in particular about the fact that it was journalist Moreno who brought the
case to light (FAZ, 2018). These actors argue for journalism’s ability to engage in
paradigm repair and reassert its autonomy.
One year after the case, procedural solutions were among the main consequences
newsrooms drew from the scandal. Journalists set out to defend the field through im-
provements to their professional practices, such as increasing fact-checking or devel-
oping new editorial standards (Meedia, 2019). Thus, the Relotius affair is a significant
example of how affective dynamics and boundary work interact when journalism as
an institution engages in lively discursive exchanges while facing multiple challenges.
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19
Discussion
In this article, we explored how emotional labor permeates both the discursive negoti-
ations around journalism as an institution and journalists’ day-to-day practices and re-
lationships. Our analysis of the German and international media coverage of the fraud
scandal around star reporter Relotius provided us with insights into how the manage-
ment of emotions forms and challenges journalism’s institutional character, and how
this character is discursively negotiated among journalists and with the public.
Using affect and emotion as a lens allowed us to distinguish four main themes that
permeated the discussion. First, the discourse around storytelling in feature stories was
marked by negotiations around reporters’ emotional labor, both when researching on
the ground and in their attempts to fulfill colleagues’ and audiences’ expectations. Re-
lotius’ feature stories were deemed “too perfect to be true”, in the sense that they con-
firm readers’ biases towards certain countries and subjects. They were deemed to have
a “tranquilizing effect” that reduces uncertainty about a complex reality. In contrast,
there was a high regard for reporters who performed emotional labor in their feature
stories by explicitly allowing contradictions and uncertainty into their narratives as a
way to make matters more palpable to readers. In short, storytelling can be described
as emotional labor with words – anticipating readers’ (limited) ability to deal with
emotional dissonance.
A second discursive strand related to Relotius himself as an actor in the journalistic
field. Relotius’ performed personality – often described as humble, nice and shy –
contrasted sharply with that of his peers at Der Spiegel, described as arrogant and self-
serving. He was almost expected to perform the same characteristics as other star re-
porters. Relotius’ apparent deviation from the field’s cultural and symbolic capital en-
abled the long-lasting fraud and added to his peers’ shock after his fabrications were
uncovered. On the level of journalistic subjects, a blatant contradiction becomes ap-
parent. On the one hand, role expectations towards a journalist, especially one em-
ployed at a prestigious media outlet with privileged working conditions, include the
performative production of certain emotions, such as arrogance, pride, vanity. On the
other hand, it is precisely the deviation from this pattern that generates special trust for
this journalist among colleagues. This highlights the fundamental need for research on
current attempts to redefine role expectations and self-image of journalists, as journal-
ism seems to be losing credibility worldwide.
This brings us to the third discursive strand in the coverage, namely, emotional
labor inside Der Spiegel’s newsroom. While there is a complex debate about the place
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20
of emotions in journalistic texts, the significance of emotions in everyday journalistic
practices is rarely discussed in journalism scholarship, with the exception of the affec-
tive dynamics of the war and crisis reporting experience (e.g. Rentschler, 2009). How-
ever, what becomes visible in the media discourse on Relotius’ fabrications is the rel-
evance of emotional and affective practices in the newsroom. The coverage reveals
how the newsroom’s internal hierarchy was emotionally structured, in particular with
regard to the privileged position that the reporters writing for the Society beat enjoyed.
Feelings of envy, intimidation, hatred and admiration towards this beat contributed to
processes of inclusion and exclusion. Journalism as a social field emerges as structured
by emotions. As a result, one of the reasons for Relotius’ long success was that he was
seen as part of a privileged group whose authority went unchallenged by other Der
Spiegel employees, including fact-checkers. It took a persistent outsider to bring the
scandal to light. In short, the history of journalism is a history of (mostly male, white,
bourgeois) comradeship in the newsroom, closed against others and celebrating itself
with prizes awarded within these very homogenous social structures as recent research
has made impressively visible (Vassiliou-Enz et al., 2020). Future studies should look
into how this history has been clashing with growing demands for more diverse news-
rooms, questioning power structures that have been in place for a long time. These
developments will bring new challenges towards journalism as an institution.
Finally, a fourth discursive strand reflects the new institutionalist literature. This
strand concerns how actors outside the organization Der Spiegel reacted to the scandal
and interpreted it as an event relevant to journalism as an institution. Affect is also
relevant for understanding the “shockwaves” that are often noted with regard to this
event and its impact on journalism. This illustrates the affective intensity actors at-
tributed to this event, especially in the context of journalism’s attempts to defend its
social function in the face of increasing attacks from the far right and of socioeconomic
changes. Actors also reaffirmed established journalistic practices, such as fact-check-
ing and transparency. The wide circulation of such discourses in the coverage reveals
journalists’ attempts to stabilize the institution of journalism by performing paradigm
repair. At the same time, it is journalism itself that discursively builds the moment of
crisis, which it simultaneously laments itself. The intensity and the drama with which
Der Spiegel’s 'fall from grace’ is publicly branded and repentantly mourned, is a build-
ing block of a crisis narrative well known as an affective pattern in journalism. Thus,
the production of institutional crisis as a narrative is an effect of this very affective
regime of journalism as well as its weakness: the affective intensity of crisis production
is often followed by silent lack of consequences.
SFB 1171 Affective Societies – Working Paper 03/20
21
Following our understanding of affect and emotions as relational phenomena, we
understand the journalistic coverage of such moments of institutional crisis as an at-
tempt to react to affective publics’ growing emotional reflexivity. Our case study
shows that the times when journalism could deny its interactions with emotions are
over. Thus, it is essential to empirically research what this means for journalism as an
institution.
By analyzing the affective dimensions of the discourse around Relotius’ fabrica-
tions, we emphasize the central roles of affect, emotions, feeling rules and emotional
labor in (de-)institutionalization processes, as the institution of journalism negotiates
its social function through discourse. This calls for further studies focusing on emotion
as a constitutive element in processes of (de-)stabilization and transformation of jour-
nalism as an institution.
Funding
This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of
CRC1171 Affective Societies.
Endnotes
Media outlet
Selected articles
BILD
3
Der Spiegel
9
Die tageszeitung (taz)
10
Die Welt
11
Die Zeit
14
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)
14
Kress
5
Meedia
15
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)
13
The New York Times (NYT)
4
Salomkolumnisten
2
SFB 1171 Affective Societies – Working Paper 03/20
22
Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ)
18
telepolis
4
Übermedien
11
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)
5
Total
138
Table 1: Selected articles in the material per media outlet.
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Media articles
Bild (2018). Waren die erfundenen Geschichten Propaganda? Bild, 21 December, p. 2.
Der Spiegel (2018a). Hausmitteilung. Betr. Der Fall Claas Relotius. Der Spiegel, No. 52/2018, p.
3.
Der Spiegel (2018b). SPIEGEL legt Betrugsfall im eigenen Haus offen. Der Spiegel, 19 December.
Retrieved on 10 May 2020 from https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/fall-claas-relotius-
spiegel-legt-betrug-im-eigenen-haus-offen-a-1244579.html
Der Spiegel (2019). Der Fall Relotius. Abschlussbericht der Aufklärungskommission. Der Spiegel,
No. 22/2019, pp. 130-146. Retrieved on 10 May 2020 from https://cdn.prod.www.spie-
gel.de/media/67c2c416-0001-0014-0000-000000044564/media-44564.pdf
Die Welt (2019). „Luftgewehr der FANTASIE“. Axel-Springer-Chef Mathias Döpfner sieht durch
den Fälschungsskandal beim „Spiegel“ das Grundvertrauen in die Medien erschüttert – und
warnt vor falscher Branchensolidarität. Die Welt, 15 January, p. 10.
Die Zeit (2018a). Die Welt als Reportage. Die Zeit, 27 December, p. 42.
Die Zeit (2018b). Spiegel-Bild USA. Fake als Kunstform, oder: Wir glauben, was wir schon immer
wussten. Die Zeit, 27 December, p. 12.
Die Zeit (2018c). Wir wären blind für die Welt. Die Zeit, 27 December. Retrieved on 9 May 2020
from https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2018-12/reportagen-claas-relotius-spiegel-journalimus-stand-
ards-fakten-pruefung
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – FAZ (2018). Regnet es jetzt von unten nach oben? Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), 20 December. Retrieved on 9 May 2020 from
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/spiegel-betrugsfall-claas-relotius-nimmt-noch-
fahrt-auf-15952403.html
Kress (2018). Die Relotius-Fälschungen. Kein Fehler im System, aber ein Fiasko der Qualitätssi-
cherung. Kress, 20 December. Retrieved on 9 May 2020 from https://kress.de/news/detail/bei-
trag/141817-die-relotius-faelschungen-kein-fehler-im-system-aber-ein-fiasko-der-quali-
taetssicherung.html
Kress (2019a). Bleibt gelassen. Paul-Josef Raues letzter Teil der Relotius-Bilanz. Kress, 19 March.
Retrieved on May 9 from https://kress.de/news/detail/beitrag/142368-bleibt-gelassen-paul-
josef-raues-letzter-teil-der-relotius-bilanz.html
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Kress (2019b). 100 Tage Relotius. Warum die Reportage unverzichtbar ist. Kress, 5 March. Re-
trieved on 9 May 2020 from https://kress.de/news/detail/beitrag/142252-100-tage-relotius-
warum-die-reportage-unverzichtbar-ist.html
Meedia (2019). Ein Jahr nach Relotius. So haben die Redaktionen von “Zeit”, WDR, RTL & Co.
auf den Skandal reagiert. Meedia, 18 December. Retrieved on 9 May 2020 from
https://meedia.de/2019/12/18/ein-jahr-nach-relotius-so-haben-die-redaktionen-von-zeit-wdr-
rtl-co-auf-den-skandal-reagiert/
Neue Züricher Zeitung – NZZ (2019a). „Viele Journalisten verhalten sich zutiefst unjournalis-
tisch“. Interview with Mathias Döpfner. Neue Züricher Zeitung (NZZ), 9 February, p. 10-11.
Neue Züricher Zeitung - NZZ (2019b). Wann lösen wir die Ministerien der Wahrheit auf? Neue
Züricher Zeitung (NZZ), 8 January, p. 11.
Süddeutsche Zeitung - SZ (2018a). Fälschungen beim "Spiegel". "Ich wusste, dass er lügt". Inter-
view with Juan Moreno. Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), 20 December. Retrieved on 10 May 2020
from https://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/claas-relotius-spiegel-juan-moreno-1.4261593
Süddeutsche Zeitung - SZ (2018b). Journalist Claas Relotius gibt Reporterpreise zurück. Süddeut-
sche Zeitung (SZ), 20 December. Retrieved on 10 May 2020 from https://www.sueddeut-
sche.de/medien/claas-relotius-spiegel-journalismus-reporterpreis-1.4260937
Süddeutsche Zeitung – SZ (2019). Alle einsteigen! Was Reporter und Schriftsteller unterscheidet?
Ein einziger Satz: „Ich war da.“ Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), 11 January, p. 9.
taz – die tageszeitung (2019a). Hinter dem Betrug verbirgt sich die Eitelkeit und hinter der Eitelkeit
beginnt das Versagen. taz – die tageszeitung, 29/30 May 2019, pp. 4-5.
taz – die tageszeitung (2019b). Weiße Dramaturgien. Der Fall Relotius ist der Vorhof des Verbre-
chens. Über weißes Schreiben, antiaufklärerische Trends und koloniale Einfühlungsästhetik.
taz, die tageszeitung, 16 January, p. 12.
The New York Times – NYT (2018). After German Journalism Scandal, Critics Are ‘Popping the
Corks’. The New York Times, 21 December. Retrieved on 10 May 2020 from https://www.ny-
times.com/2018/12/20/world/europe/der-spiegel-claas-relotius.html
The Washington Post (2018). The latest journalism scandal proves it. Partisan writing is one way
to keep journalists honest. The Washington Post, 29 December. Retrieved on 10 May 2020
from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-latest-journalism-scandal-proves-it-parti-
san-writing-is-one-way-to-keep-journalists-honest/2018/12/28/88a011f6-0ae3-11e9-a3f0-
71c95106d96a_story.html
Übermedien (2018). Der „Spiegel“ und die gefährliche Kultur des Geschichten-Erzählens. Über-
medien, 19 December. Retrieved on 10 May 2020 from https://uebermedien.de/33962/der-spie-
gel-und-die-gefaehrliche-kultur-des-geschichten-erzaehlens/
Übermedien (2019a). Die Legende des Jungen, der angeblich den Krieg in Syrien auslöste. Über-
medien, 8 January. Retrieved on 10 May 2020 from https://uebermedien.de/34149/die-legende-
des-jungen-der-angeblich-den-krieg-in-syrien-ausloeste/
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Übermedien (2019b). Die Reaktionen auf die „Causa Relotius“ sind ohne jedes Augenmaß. Über-
medien, 4 January. Retrieved on 10 May 2020 from https://uebermedien.de/34166/die-reaktio-
nen-auf-die-causa-relotius-sind-ohne-jedes-augenmass/