WATCHING THE WATCHDOG: ONLINE DISCOURSES ABOUT MEDIA FRAUDS

Theoretical and practical justifications of journalistic storytelling stress its potentials for creating a truthful and authentic account of social reality – a necessary prerequisite for journalism in order to live up to its role as a public watchdog (e.g., Schmidt 2019). At the same time, however, narrative approaches to journalism are a regular cause of considerable criticism, particularly when they contribute to blurring the sacred boundaries between fact and fiction (Underwood 2013). Public discussions about the mandate of narrative journalism are often triggered by fraud scandals such as the ones provoked by pseudo-reporters Janet Cooke or Jayson Blair in the U.S., and Tom Kummer or Claas Relotius in the German-speaking world (e.g., Jones Patterson & Urbanski 2006; Reus 2004). The proposed paper uses the Relotius case as a starting point for a systematic analysis of the responsibility of narrative journalists in an age of “fake news” and post-truth politics – and the question of how they can be held to account in the online realm.