Don’t Mess With Fergus Falls

German “journalist” Claas Relotius spent many years on the European and world journalistic fast track, until it was realized he’d spent years falsifying stories.

One of those stories was about the xenophobic misanthropic fascist racists in…

…Fergus Falls, MN.

And he didn’t just make up the little stuff. Two local residents combed through the story:

There are so many lies here, that my friend Jake and I had to narrow them down to top 11 most absurd lies (we couldn’t do just 10) for the purpose of this article. We’ve been working on it since the article came out in spring of 2017, but had to set it aside to attend to our lives (raising a family, managing a nonprofit organization, etc.) before coming back to it this fall, and finally wrapped things up a few weeks ago, just in time to hear today that Relotius was fired when he was exposed for fabricating many of his articles.

The following was neither the dumbest nor the most extravagant of Relotius’ lies:

6. The view from the Viking Cafe
“You can see the power plant where he works when you look out the window of the Diner, six tall, gray towers, from which rise white steam clouds.”
The Viking Cafe is Fergus Falls’ most treasured downtown establishment — over 60 years old. One of the reasons we Minnesotans all like it so much is that it has a cozy, underground feeling. Why? Because there are literally NO WINDOWS in the interior of this restaurant. Sure, you can see a little bit out the small front windows, but nothing beyond the shops across the street. The power plant Relotius refers to is almost 2 miles away on the northeast edge of town, blocked from view by a neighborhood on a large hill, and sports a single smokestack. Relotius’ imaginings are dramatic for the movie version of Trump’s America someday, but is it accurate and true? Not in the least.

Further proof that if you read it in the mainstream media, and it’s even a little bit political, distrust first. Then verify.

Then, almost invariably, distrust some more.

6 thoughts on “Don’t Mess With Fergus Falls

  1. The article is fake, but accurate. He wrote it to raise awareness. The people he mentioned were actually composites of people in Fergus Falls and those he imagined. The author was suffering from diagnosed bipolar disorder and severe alcohol and drug addiction.

    What? These justifications were accepted for other hoaxes. Dan Rather. Mari Poindexter. Barack Obama. Jason Blair. Why shouldn’t Relotius get to use one?

  2. Just like climate change, the media is always “worse than we thought”.

    Der Spiegel is reputed to have the largest and best fact checking organization in all of media.

    Excuse me? You don’t believe that? I get my information from none other than the Columbia Journalism Review. See Inside the World’s Largest Fact Checking Operation

    Soooooooo, if I were checking facts, I would do the simple stuff first. Like anytime there was a number (a static fact), I would Google it, just to check.

    Der Spiegels vaunted fact checkers would have found a half a dozen errors just doing that and it would have taken no more than one staff member a half hour to do it.

    And failing that, red flags should have been raised – but like the New York Times and Washington Post, as well as The Atlantic, Salon, Slate, Vox, NPR and PBS – who wants to fact check anything that supports the progressive narrative?

  3. Greg, they’re not “fact-checkers”, but “narrative-checkers”. If it lines up with the narrative, then our journalistic Warrior-Priests are given a pass by the gate-keepers.

    It’s best to simply discount most of what you read. For example, today the StarTribune reported that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg had surgery for cancerous growth in her lungs. The only part of that story I’m willing to consider as a “fact” is that there is a Supreme Court Justice named Ruth Bader-Ginsburg.

  4. Night Writer,

    Not too sure about the narrative checking. I mean, Claas Relotius NEVER would have got this past the checkers at NPR, MPR or PBS, for instance:

    “You can see the power plant where he works when you look out the window of the Diner, six tall, gray towers, from which rise white steam clouds.”

    Twenty-six words and not a single reference to race, gender, class or sexual orientation. This makes Claas a racist, sexist, elitist homophobe who should be blackballed from all of journalism.

    Now if he had written “Ze can see….”, he would have been deemed a cultural hero and immune from all fact checking.

    As for the StarTribune’s mention of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg’s surgery, I am sure they got their information from an authoritative source – like BuzzFeed.

  5. Layers and layers of gatekeepers.

    Greg has it right. Throwing something out as fact is a gift from leftist liars because it gives us a jump off point. Although I don’t Google, Duck Duck Go usually tells me right away when some reprobate is trying to strap some BS on me.

    For instance, they say they cut all of the cancer out of Ginsberg, but because she is one big metastatic heap we know they are lying unless they used a flamethrower.

    Cannot wait to enjoy the beautiful rainbow all the moonbat tears will make when she slides down into Baphomet’s warm embrace.

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