Who corrects “Correctiv”?
A summary and a guest post by Peter Welchering on the "Correctiv case" in Germany
Just over a year ago, Germany was shaken by a political and media earthquake. A text by the research network “Correctiv” was at center stage. Some speak of the biggest media lie of 2024, others have named the collective of authors “Journalists of the Year”. The case illustrates the current political climate in the country. Shortly before the early elections in February 2025, my guest author and I review the events.
Summary
In January 2024, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Germany “against the right”. The immediate trigger for the protests was a publication by the research network “Correctiv” with the title: “Secret plan against Germany”. According to the authors, a right-wing circle around the Alternative for Germany party, AfD, met in a villa on Potsdam's Lehnitzsee (Lehnitz Lake). There, they allegedly planned the expulsion of millions of people with migration background from Germany - even of those with a German passport. While the text caused an outcry among the public and the media, the subsequent court rulings against the reporting went largely unnoticed. In court, Correctiv argued that their text mainly contained opinions and assessments. The authors had to correct several formulations in order to avoid factual claims. The main researcher now admitted to the weekly ZEIT (Time) that the word “expulsion” was not used at the incriminated meeting. “But of course it was meant,” he added.
At the time the text was published, the independent media sensed a set-up between Correctiv and politicians to distract attention from the weakness of the governing parties and to eliminate the AfD as a political actor. The established media including public radio and television took over the narrative of Correctiv, most of them without proper counter-research. Some used the term “deportation” in their secondary reporting instead of the word “remigration”. In Germany, “deportation” is associated with the systematic deportation of Jews to concentration camps during the “Third Reich”. The meeting at which the alleged “Secret plan against Germany” was supposed to have been discussed was turned into “Wannsee Conference 2.0”. The historic Wannsee Conference was a secret meeting on January 20, 1942 in a villa on the Großer Wannsee, a lake near Potsdam/Berlin. High-ranking representatives of the National Socialist Reich government and the “Schutzstaffel” (protection squadron), the SS, came together to organize and coordinate the details of the “final solution”.
The network Correctiv is financed by three pillars: As a non-profit it receives donations from individuals as well as grants from foundations and the public sector. The third pillar is a commercial subsidiary. Among the foundations are Google and Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar, who is also one of the main sponsors of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which awards certificates to “fact-checkers”, including Correctiv. Public sector grants come from Federal and State ministries and institutions, the partly state-owned Telekom, from party foundations like of the Greens and Christian Democratic Party (CDU) financed exclusively from taxpayers' money. The commercial subsidiary carried out “fact checks” for Facebook/Meta Platforms which led to the deletion of posts.
The right-wing Alternative for Germany, AfD, is the second largest parliamentary group in the Bundestag, the parliament, and, according to surveys, the biggest competitor of the other parties. Then Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD), Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) and other ministers of SPD, CDU and The Left took part in demonstrations “against the right” and AfD. One of the most renowned German constitutional law experts, Christoph Degenhart, commented in the Neue Juristische Wochenzeitung (New Legal Weekly): “It is also worth reflecting on how a story that was at least misleadingly worded was able to trigger a mass movement, at which high-ranking political representatives did not hesitate to take the lead, by participating in demonstrations in a constitutionally unclear collusion of roles, and verbal escalation.”
Journalist Peter Welchering describes why, in his opinion, the “Correctiv case” is an example of journalistic failure on several levels.
By Peter Welchering
On November 9, 2016, the day after the US presidential election, Correctiv founder David Schraven wrote in the research network's newsletter: “Now it's over and almost official. Donald Trump has lost the US presidential election. Hillary Clinton has won”.
On January 10, 2024, the research network Correctiv published a text with the headline “Secret plan against Germany”. A team of authors wrote: “Nobody was supposed to find out about this meeting. High-ranking AfD politicians, neo-Nazis and financially strong entrepreneurs came together in a hotel near Potsdam in November. They planned nothing less than the expulsion of millions of people from Germany.”
The statement made by Schraven in the Correctiv newsletter of November 9, 2016 was wrong. It was not Hillary Clinton who won the US presidential election, but Donald Trump. Correctiv corrected the incorrect statement in the newsletter.
The text “Secret plan against Germany” was reported on by the news magazine “Spiegel” (Mirror), the anchor news programs of the First and Second German public television (Tagesschau, Heute-Journal) and many other media outlets in Germany. What received little attention, however, was that some media outlets subsequently were banned from making certain statements about the alleged “secret plan against Germany” and about the meeting in Potsdam. For example, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Hamburg issued a ruling on July 23, 2024 against Norddeutscher Rundfunk (North German Broadcasting), which is responsible for the public television anchor news program “Tagesschau” (Daily Look). The court judged about the statements made online by the Tagesschau: “From a procedural point of view, it must be assumed that the defendant's claim that the expulsion of German citizens was discussed at the meeting in Potsdam is untrue”.
In the case of Hillary Clinton's erroneous election victory, Correctiv corrected itself. In the case of the reports on the “secret plan against Germany”, the courts had to review the reporting of various media about the Correctiv text as well as a false factual claim in the Correctiv text itself.
The legal disputes surrounding the Correctiv text have become somewhat confusing, and the journalistic ones even highly confusing. So let's shed some light on the dark.
In January 2024, Correctiv publishes its article “Secret plan against Germany” in the style of a drama in three acts. The authors divide their text into sections with titles such as “Prologue”, Act 1, Scene Act 1, Scene 2, etc. up to the “Epilogue”. A first fatal journalistic error occurs, when various editorial offices report on what is written there as if it were news. Correctiv's drama is incorrectly categorized by these editorial offices as “reportage” or “report”. The Correctiv's dramatic fiction, i.e. the mixture of fact, fiction or association and association and opinion, is reported as fact.
The form of presentation chosen by Correctiv poses a serious journalistic problem: the boundaries between facts and interpretations can be blurred in a drama, which makes it very difficult for third parties to distinguish between facts, associations and opinions. What's more, in this specific case, the journalistically required counter-research into the Correctiv allegations by other media was generally omitted. The fact that the Correctiv authors refer to sources but do not name them specifically is not sufficiently taken into account by the editorial offices reporting on the drama.
They also fail to recognize the consequences that arise from the chosen style of publication. So who can correct Correctiv? Well, only journalists who do their job can. But some editorial offices have not done that. Instead, they have massively violated journalistic standards.
So the demand is: back to journalistic standards. Only those who have really mastered the craft of journalism can practise serious journalism.
This text was first published as a spoken commentary on German public radio, Deutschlandfunk. The author, Peter Welchering, kindly provided me with the manuscript so that I could translate it. For readers who are not familiar with the German party landscape, I have added explanations where I felt they were necessary.