German reporter stripped of CNN International "Journalist of the Year" award after caught fabricating stories

Fake News CNN, or rather, CNN International, yanked the "Journalist of the Year" award from a disgraced Der Spiegel reporter, Claas Relotius, a practitioner of fake news.

You have to go back to the Hitler Diaries hoax to find a bigger embarrassment for German journalism.

From AP:

A German journalist who was found to have fabricated numerous articles is being stripped of two awards he received in 2014 from CNN International, the broadcaster said Thursday.

In a statement to The Associated Press, CNN International said the independent panel of judges who awarded Claas Relotius the Journalist of the Year and Print Journalist of the Year awards four years ago decided unanimously to remove them following revelations about his fraud.

German magazine Der Spiegel, where Relotius worked as a freelancer and later full-time, said Wednesday that he had fabricated interviews and facts in at least 14 articles.

The publication, one of Germany's leading news outlets, said the 33-year-old had committed journalistic fraud "on a grand scale" over a number of years, including fabricating elements of an article about an American woman who he said volunteered to witness the executions of death row inmates.

Then there is his fictitious story about the town of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, where nearly every stereotype of the rural Midwest is thrown in, including those about guns, race relations, media habits, and insularity. There are fabricated quotes, interviews that never happened, and stuff that is plainly incorrect.

Of course Time calls journalists "the Guardians."