Original subtitles

The following programme contains strong language.

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(CRICKETS BUZZ)

(SOFT MUSIC)

"On a night

when thousands of people march northwards

through the Mexican Highlands,

with good or bad intentions,

200 kilometres away in Arizona,

six men in uniform stand on a mountain

that separates the Mexican desert from the United States...

..waiting for the invasion.

They carry ammunition belts

automatic rifles, bulletproof vests,

and made-up names.

A man peers down into the Altar Valley

through his night vision goggles.

He's not sure what's down there.

Is it an animal or a person?

The hunter squints into the darkness.

His rifle rests on his shoulder.

(GUN COCKS)

Eventually...

..he pulls the trigger."

(GUNSHOT)

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

(LOW, TENSE MUSIC)

NEWS: Relotius committed journalistic fraud on a grand scale.

(WOMAN SPEAKING GERMAN)

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

(LIGHT, TENSE MUSIC)

(WATER DRIPPING)

"It was a Wednesday morning.

Cleaning day in jail.

The inmates from cell block G4,

all of them rapists and murderers, were next in line.

The old man was frightened of the water.

He backed away from it,

moaning, sobbing, and crying for help.

The only one to react was Praetorius.

He simply began to sing.

Quietly at first.

Then louder and louder.

Bye-bye, love, Bye-bye, happiness."

"Praetorius, the convicted killer,

seemed for a moment to embody both figures:

that of a father familiarising his son with water,

and that of a mother singing to her little child

to make him stop crying."

(LIGHT, TENSE MUSIC)

"SAY WHAT IS."- RUDOLF AUGSTEIN

CNN Journalist of the Year 2014 - Claas Relotius.

(APPLAUSE)

(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)

(LIGHT APPLAUSE)

NEWS:

One of the country's best-known journalists

has admitted to, literally, making up stories.

(LOW, TENSE MUSIC)

(SOMBRE PIANO MUSIC)

"One evening in late January,

a small, delicate woman leaves her house

to watch a man she does not know die.

America's citadel of executions

stands smack in the middle of the city,

located next to a donut shop and housing estates where children play.

Gayle Gladys slowly approaches the prison wall.

Snipers sit in the watchtowers.

The hands on the clock above the entrance

stopped moving decades ago."

(MUSIC FADES, ENDS)

"The room in which the state of Texas kills its convicts

is about 3.6 metres long and 2.8 metres wide.

Anthony Shores takes just nine or ten steps

to enter the execution chamber.

Mere seconds pass

before Gayle Gladys sees a clear liquid flow through the tube

and into Shores' veins.

She leaves the compound and goes on a long walk.

At some point, she reaches a wide, sloping hill

covered with hundreds of gravestones and crosses.

Gladys walks across the grass-covered graves.

Slowly, she passes row after row.

The oldest stones have sunk into the ground.

The names engraved on them barely legible."

QUOTE: A child filled with hatred or with fear?

"Hundreds of worshippers flocked to the blue mosque

next to the market square.

Four minutes before Nadim, a child with reddened eyes,

pulled the trigger on his vest and blew himself up

with 9.5 kilogrammes of explosives,

the muezzin of Kirkuk called for the evening prayer.

The brothers, Nadim and Kalib, came to murder

as cold-blooded killers, fighters of the caliphate,

whom Islamic State had kidnapped and groomed to become suicide attackers.

One of them, Nadim, the younger one, can still recount this story.

Only he survived."

"The maximum security prison of the autonomous region of Kurdistan

is an imposing fortress

built to hold 3000 prisoners in the middle of the desert.

More than 150 men sit in its cells.

Terrorists, mass murderers.

And since 30 days...

a child."

(CALL TO PRAYER ECHOES ACROSS CITY)

(HUMS TO SELF)

(SPEAKS IN ARABIC)

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

(LOW CHATTER ON VIDEO)

(LOW, SOMBRE MUSIC)

(SPOKEN VIA GERMAN TRANSLATOR)

"The bus from Fergus Falls heads north from Minneapolis.

It rolls towards a dark forest

that looks like it could be a home to dragons.

At the entrance to the village stands a sign:

'Welcome to Fergus Falls, home of damn good folks.'

About halfway up the sign, but impossible to miss,

large painted letters read:

'Mexicans keep out!'"

(LOW, SOMBRE MUSIC)

"Early on Friday morning,

eight men wearing baseball caps sit here.

They're workmen or farmers.

At some point that morning,

they talk about camel drivers and bean eaters.

One of the men says:

'We need to know who's coming here, and who we'll be dealing with.'

Another one:

'We have to protect ourselves from terrorists and drugs.'"

(BOUNCY CLASSICAL PIANO)

What do you think of that? Do you wanna play?

(PIANO CONTINUES)

My name is Michele Anderson

and I live in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.

It's a really connected town.

With 14,000 people,

it's small enough to feel like people care about you.

(PIANO ENDS)

My name is Jake Krohn, I'm a technology consultant,

and I live in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.

It's my home, it's where I live,

it's where my kids are going to school

and where I'm raising a family.

Nothing I do in my daily job has anything to do with journalism.

I'm not a journalist.

The first time I heard that a journalist was here from der Spiegel

was actually at a concert at our downtown community theatre,

and a friend of mine asked me,

"Did you hear that this journalist was in town?

You really should talk to him. He's really interesting.

It sounds really exciting, what he's working on."

I have this imagine of him and it's very distinct in my mind

of his back to the entire gathering.

There were probably 50-60 people there

that had interesting stories and interesting perspectives.

But his back was to us all and he was just photographing

the American flag.

"The inhabitants of Fergus Falls stick together.

After some time, many of them invite me to their homes for dinner.

They'll often ask me about Germany and Europe.

Whether travelling there is still safe.

'How many millions of refugees live there now?'

'How will we protect ourselves from attacks?'

These people are not racists,

but they're afraid of everything they're not familiar with."

A friend of mine sent it to me when it was published.

I kind of scrolled through it.

It was in German and it was very long.

I spent some time running it through a really rough Google translate

and we immediately noticed that it was just wrong.

Michele's original message to us on April 1st, 2017:

"WTF?!

If you can read this translation of the article

about Fergus Falls in der Spiegel.

We need to discuss this article ASAP and fact-check the fuck out of it."

(LOW, SOMBRE MUSIC)

He came up with something that read really well,

but it didn't accurately portray what life is like in a small town.

He made it into a movie.

A simple story that people could understand

and wrap their heads around

and probably reinforce existing beliefs.

The truth is always more complicated and nuanced.

You knew the people, the principal characters, involved in the story,

but hearing these stories that Relotius wrote about these people

not really, just, connecting.

Like, do I even really know these people? Who are these people?

You were Neil Becker, you were a 57-year-old coal shoveler.

A coal shoveler at the power plant.

There wasn't- No people shovelling any coal.

So that was a pretty interesting part of the story.

And that part about my hands being painted black all the time.

It gives the readers an image of... ..a working man.

Right.

I grew up close to the power plant, but I never touched a piece of coal.

Looking at your hands, I don't see any coal dust on them.

And here's what it says:

"Neil Becker is beating his black hand on the table.

The sign on the edge of town with the warning to Mexicans

stood in Fergus Falls for only one day.

Then, Becker threw it in his jeep,

took it to the garage and hacked it up into bits with an axe."

There would never be a sign on the edge of this town

for anybody to stay out.

We welcome people in this town.

The way it's depicted, with my black hands

and me chopping down the-

it's not the old Wild Wild West over here.

So I just always wondered how the magazine

let this story be published.

I knew this was big.

How can a journalist spend three weeks in a community

and get away with such a false portrayal?

So there was, in my head, a sense of urgency, you know,

to get moving on some kind of a response.

Truth is important. Truth about your own community is important.

When it hits so personally, and it's this town where you're raising kids.

You're working, you're making a living here,

you're trying to make a change.

It's not his story to tell, you know.

(LOW, TENSE MUSIC)

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

(SOMBRE STRING MUSIC)

"In Daraa, a young man by the name of Mouawiya Syasneh

turns on the camera on his mobile phone.

'Yallah, follow me. Let me show you where it all started.

He holds his mobile phone up into the air as he walks and ducks

- bullets could hit him from anywhere -

through abandoned neighbourhoods.

He films the last streets that still separate Assad's troops

from him and the few remaining rebels.

After a few hundred steps,

Mouawiya crouches in the dust in front of an old, ruined wall.

'This was the wall', Mouawiya says,

on which he spray-painted Arabic letters seven years ago.

They're no longer recognisable.

Where they once stood, today only bullet holes can be seen."

(LIGHT, TENSE MUSIC)

I was born in Aleppo.

I moved to Germany in 2015 due to the war.

Claas showed me who he was through his actions.

He was a very polite, a very nice person.

But his behaviour were all on the totally opposite side.

I started working for Spiegel in 2017.

Claas had this really great idea that I was really interested in

about how the Syrian revolution started

from a group of 13/14 years olds students

in the city of Daraa.

Where they wrote on the wall of a school: "You're next, Doctor!".

By "Doctor", they meant Bashar al-Assad.

Me and Claas did the research and interviewed a few people

until we found the person who wrote the sentence.

I spoke with him on the phone a few times.

After a whole year of doing research and finding the right person,

and finding the connections

and also finding the documents from Syria,

and that was the part where Claas stopped contacting me

and did the rest on his own.

(LIGHT TENSE MUSIC)

(GUNSHOT)

(LOW, TENSE MUSIC)

I put it this way. Your friends when they come see you,

they come to your front door.

They don't wait until you're not home and come around the back

and climb through your back window.

This is our back window, down here.

We're getting a quarter of a million people a month crossing the border.

They don't wanna stop it.

Nobody cares.

Except for me. I care.

What I do, I feel it's the right thing to do.

I expose what's going on and stop what's coming in.

I'll keep going.

I've told myself there's only two ways I'll leave this place.

One: if I feel it's secure,

or two: if I'm dead.

The first one doesn't look like it's gonna happen.

Looks like I'll be here for a while longer.

Here's what I get to look at every night.

The big one back there is called the Baba Kaveri.

In that Native tongue,

Baba Kaveri means "Eagle's beak".

So that's the Eagle's Beak.

Tim, I got two for ya here. Nice. Thank you.

Have a good one! Yes, sir.

You'll be back in the next couple of days. I got more coming.

Thank you. Have a good one!

This is a concealed carry-on.

It's tough to conceal, because I'm so thin.

But basically, you can't really tell I'm carrying a handgun.

Ready to go.

(LOW, TENSE MUSIC)

This is the only way in.

Yeah, this is Foley, down in Arivaca.

I'm at the west end of the fence by California Gulch.

There's a four-door, silver SUV parked at the very end of the fence.

They keep walking around the fence.

This is no man's land.

That's where all the bad guys are.

I've been out here for so long that

I can walk the mountains in the dark.

But so can they.

If they're nice, they'll just shoot you.

If they're not nice, they'll take you back into Mexico

and make a video of them chopping your head off.

If we do ever get in a firefight,

save the last round in your pistol for yourself.

So this is our border.

This is what they call "safe and secure".

We've got fentanyl coming through here, crystal meth,

Middle Eastern terrorists,

we're getting gang bangers,

the cartels,

rapists, murderers. Everybody comes through here.

It's a joke, is what it is, for a border.

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

(LIGHT SOMBRE MUSIC)

Juan got a hold of me by phone and he explained that he was-

At first I didn't wanna meet him.

Because he says, "Hey, we're here in Tucson

and we need to talk to you."

I was like, "You know what, it's already 6 o'clock at night."

And he goes, "No, you need to hear what we have to say."

So he got down here at about 8 or 9 o'clock at night,

and they left here at about 11.

Because I listened to him and he said, "We need to sit and talk.

You need to hear this."

Do you know this guy? He was here four weeks ago.

I don't think he's been here. Four weeks ago?

Please tell me that you talked to this guy.

I don't remember him.

He was here the day, indeed-

According to the article, he was here the day after the mid-terms.

I think the mid-terms were on the 6th.

Right, so that would've been...

The night from the 7th to the 8th.

Or the 6th to the 7th.

You spent the night with him on the mountain.

(LAUGHS) No.

He spent several nights with you in the mountains.No.

Because the last time I was in the mountains was...

The last time I was in the mountains was two weeks ago.

And the time before that was...

Was with the guys.

In June.

So no, he never spent any time out in the mountains with us.

And to be honest, I don't think I've ever seen him.

Look-Because most journalists, when we leave,

I will give them one of my cards and they give me one of their cards.

You don't have a card? Who is he with?

A German magazine called der Spiegel.

I've heard of der Spiegel, but no- Oh, this is the guy who...

Now I know who he is. Who never showed up.

Show him the article. What he thinks about, in general-

Nobody can come out with anything- Here I'll show you.

I'm going to take the...

Juan Moreno, that's me.

Claas Relotius, that's his name. Right.

And if this is a fake article, this is not correct,

that's my fucking name.

You're gonna get dragged down. I'll get the blame for it.

"...let three women from Mexico carrying backpacks full of cocaine

on their shoulders freeze in the mountains for two nights

before handing them to border guards."

Oh, my God.

Not true?

It's fucking hilarious.

This guy probably sat in a hotel room eating LSD or something.

I don't know what the hell he was smoking,

but he definitely wasn't with us.

Where does he come up with this shit?

"We protect our land. We do not kill anyone."

But later on you say he says: "And the trigger was pulled."

You don't shoot actually when you don't know what you're aiming at?

When something is moving, you don't...

Could be a border patrol agent.

No, we have strict rules on...

You cannot- Besides, if that's the way you operate a weapon,

you're not allowed around us.

Imagine a twig snapped and I pull my gun.

"Oops, it was my wife."

And your bosses actually bought this fucking line of shit?

Wow.

And they fired you?

Are you gonna show this to them?

I'm not sure.

Because whoever fired him; that's a fucking journalist.

The fucking piece of shit who wrote this is a storyteller.

And you should be fired for not knowing the difference.

Like I said,

we will be getting a lawyer and we will be coming after your ass.

Cause this is just blatant fucking horseshit. And I'm not even done!

And there's still another fucking page to go!

I can unequivocally, one hundred percent, tell you

that not one word in this is real.

It's all fabricated.

Every damn last sentence.

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

(SOMBRE MUSIC)

Claas got nominated and he won the prize for this story itself,

without even telling me that the story was nominated.

(APPLAUSE)

When I confronted Claas and telling him why this happened,

I don't feel that I was credited enough

for my whole year of work with him

he played the role of saying that,

"You know, Asia, we journalists write about tragedies,

and at the end we win prizes and win all the credit for these people

while they receive nothing." You know.

He tried to play the victim and tried to make me feel bad

for asking for something that was actually my right.

For me it was a matter of my existence as well.

It's part of my identity.

(SOMBRE MUSIC)

(LOW, TENSE MUSIC)

I was angry and disappointed.

Now this story is now considered a fake story.

The lies all rely on fact or his part where he explains

how he went to Jordan,

how he met this person, how he communicated with him,

and about the biography of this person.

To this day,

we don't know if this person really shared this information.

Claas didn't just do it against me.

He did it against the whole-

This very sensitive political narrative in Syria,

how the revolution started. That's all gone now.

(SOMBRE MUSIC)

I looked at this headline: 'Claas Relotius resigns.'

I'm reading it in fast forward.

Everything from there is just a blur.

I texted Jake:

"We need to get that article up right now."

We picked out 11 points.

We sat back in my office and pulled up the article.

I quick made a "Medium" account and posted it.

Then all of a sudden we're getting messages and phone calls

and e-mails.

Twitter was blowing up.

The Medium article was getting thousands of reads a minute.

But it wasn't until the next morning

that we really understood the impact.

I woke up at 4 or 5 in the morning

and I had messages from the BBC, NPR,

New York Times, German public media,

Huffington Post, a lot of smaller outlets too.

There was a lot of adrenaline.

I wanted us to be accurately portrayed.

And I wanted to have a part in that,

you know, in that work to help set the record straight,

(SOMBRE PIANO MUSIC)

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

(TENSE MUSIC)

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