Just recently it was revealed that one of the highest decorated journalists at the Spiegel in Germany has been faking and even outright inventing stories for years. link
In 2017, he became a staff journalist for Der Spiegel, which has published almost 60 articles by Relotius since 2011.[6][7] For his detailed reporting, Relotius received several awards, including the Deutscher Reporterpreis on four occasions and as recent as 2018.[8] Relotius' Reporterpreis 2018 award was for "Best Reportage", delivered in Berlin in early December,[9][10][11] for a story of "of unprecedented lightness, density and relevance, which never leaves open the sources on which it is based."[12] He was the CNN "Journalist of the Year" in 2014,[5] and won the European Press Prize in 2017.[13]
Conspiracies
Earlier this year when I was very doubtful about honest reporting by the mainstream media people called me a conspiracy theorist. They were wrong twice! The told me there would be no big fakes, at best some small details. (And if there were fakes these would be in the dishonest web by right-wing nuts) Yet some of the highest decorated journalists write entire fake articles. Furthermore it does not need a conspiracy to make this happen.
There is no need for shady meetings, all that needs to be done is set the right (or wrong?) incentives and the system will equilibrate itself to delivering the fake news. We now know about the case of Relotius, and this will not just be an isolated case. The case shows a much deeper systematic failure of the news.
Yet people seems all to happy to dismiss real criticism of the press. They do not like what they see, they do not want to know. They defend themselves by labelling critics right-wing extremists. Many still believe everything the press writes. But when something is broken, only the truth can help and no matter if we like the outcome, we will have to face the consequences on one way or another.
The Faking of News
I am not a press insider. Therefore what I will construct here is just trying to make sense of the facts from the outside. It is one interpretation, the one I find most realistic. But there are others. One of those is that Relotius was just an isolated lunatic. Another is that there is a deep hidden conspiracy.
Corruption is one of the strongest forces in our world. Power always gets corrupted. And the press still has a huge power to shape opinions. To think that private companies could remain entirely dedicated to the truth is almost naive. Game theoretically it is very hard to construct faithful oracles in much simpler scenarios. There are many interest groups that try to influence the press and certainly some of the people working in the agencies will be corrupted and trying to put their spin on the news into print.
But all of the new people that become journalists enter the system free from corruption and idealistic in spirit. They want to report the truth and bring light. From this setup the question is how to best deliver the corruption. They key strategies are:
Education
Journalists schools teach one particular view of the world. Reporters that are rooted in this set of beliefs and values will subconsciously interpret what they perceive in that light. Then their report will already be biased. Most schools of journalism receive money and support from special interest groups and have their agenda represented in the education.
Hiring
When hiring new personal, people are more likely to hire employees that have a similar world view. This creates bubbles where the entire team has a shared view, making it much easier to quench opposing voices by a culture of consent. Even though the population is usually about 50% left and 50% right, a clear majority of working journalists in mainstream media have a closed left wing world view.
Funding
Publishing houses do no longer make most of their money from selling their content to consumers. Instead adds and third party 'support' make up most of their income. This changes the game theory quite a bit. The people on the top have a much larger interest to print stories that these special interests like. Who wants to put adds in a magazine that trashes the product? This desire runs downwards to the writers who fell the pressure to satisfy their bosses and thus the special interests.
Easy job or working hard for a lot of trouble
Journalists understand which stories get published quickly and bring them a secure well paying job. On the other hand when they try to publish a more balanced story that does not follow the unofficial narrative, they will get much more resistance. Nobody will tell them that this is not allowed. Instead the story is more thoroughly vetted and in the end declined for lack of quality. No conspiracy needed. The people on top just know that they themselves may get trouble and try to find the smallest flaw to reject undesired content. We are all just humans and most will follow the path of least resistance while rationalising a lot. Especially when their job is in danger.
Journalism prices
Relotius won many of them. Prices are paid by external money. And they always serve a purpose. That is to please the people that fund them. Prices are a way to show others which stories are good and welcome stories. By chasing these prices journalists are encouraged to write fake news. In the case of Relotius, the anti-trump pro-immigrant narrative was a winning point and each journalist understands that imitating him at least a bit is a key to success.
Centralised networks
Media corporations are concentrated into few giant networks that are well connected to government and industry think tanks. Here general narratives are set and deals are made. This is the conspiracy part and these connection are well documented. But they only involve few people at the very top. The Relotius case happened on its own after these people have set the stage for it.
In summary, Relotius knew very well which kind of narrative brings promotions, recognition and fame. He then simply tried to deliver these stories. When reality was to boring, he added a few details. When there was nothing to find he invited the whole story. And he was good at it! But doing this on his own, covering his tracks, he was not just adding noise to the system, he was reporting as the people on the top wanted it. Without a direct exchange of plans. Just another greedy and corrupt pawn for the system.
Non-reporting
While this case of direct faking of news can be uncovered and is probably still a rarity, the real problem lies in the dark. Much less dangerous are the little changes. And to be honest, we should expect some overstatements in almost every article.
And even worse is what is not being reported at all. Printing a lie is a risk. It may come to light one day. But not printing anything is very very safe. In todays world instead of lying there is a huge trend to only report fractions of the truth making it appear out of context, or simple not reporting facts at all if they do not fit the planned narrative.
And this will never create a public outcry as the Relotius case. But in fact it is much much worse and leads to the same propaganda machinery. Just try to find out about the chemical attacks in Syria. All of the news is filled with the alleged attack in Douma in April. While you certainly heard about those, you likely did not know there were more chemical attacks in Syria, one just recently link. These simply did not fit the narrative and were left out from the news. A chemical attack somehow is not equal to a chemical attack.
Or look at more distant events, the 1988 Halabdscha gas attack. The western news did strangely almost not report on it and only years later when Hussein was no longer a US ally these stories resurfaced. Nowadays we luckily know the details and can reconstruct how the news failed. Just since 1988 it has not gotten any better, rather much much worse. link
When it happens to the best ...
The case that came to light now, due to an honest reporter that suspected fake reporting and did not stop until he had proof is just the tip of the iceberg. It happened in one of the most prestigious journals of Germany. Each articles goes through layers of editing and checking before it is printed. Yet nobody found the blatant fakes for many years. Instead these stories won prices, again without checking sources or anything. If it can happen there it can happen anywhere.
Every article we read could be faked, but much more likely are small edits, fixed formulations and deliberate holes in the stories. Then finally there is a lot of news that is simply not reported at all. In the end what we consume is a very biased picture of reality, produced to manipulate us. Keep us stupid and misinformed so we keep voting and surrendering to our masters. And all of this without needing massive conspiracies, just some people with a lot of power creating a system with many little incentives to report as they want it.
If you still believe all of the news, please realise there are many fakes. Of course we cannot find them all ourselves, but the simplest fix is to consume the fakes from all sides. Consume news from different interest groups. See where they differ and then decide for yourself.