Slashdot Mirror

In the German Wikipedia, someone added yet another name [link target in German] to the long list of names of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a German politician. Afterwards, some newspapers copied the changed name from Wikipedia (without giving the source). Then someone at Wikipedia reverted that change, only to get the revert reverted again, citing one of those newspapers as source.

The german media watchblog BILDblog just reported (in german) this to be a hoax. The connection between Facebook and STDs was constructed by The Sun, not by Prof. Kelly.

The Department of Public Health even issued a counterstatement according to the BBC.

These pictures are taken from BILD.de, a magazine (won't call it newspaper here), comparable to the SUN. Source: http://www.bildblog.de/14866/kehraus-2009/ (sorry, German only).

Basically, they've taken pictures from a CD of various images, among them "50 images of a naked woman", inverted them and added some images of weapons.

Totally false and no true representation of actual images, these should not be used for arguing against nudie-scanners.

Google results with "Wilhelm" = 2060 results.

With so many sources agreeing that "Wilhelm" is one of his first names it must be right!

So, Mr. von und zu Guttenberg: You better get your passport checked, there seems to be one name missing on it!

BTW if you can read german you can find a anonymous blog entry from the guy who added the "Wilhelm" to Wikipedia.

On that page I loved the quote from the "Süddeutsche" newspaper which translates into something like:

"...and his ten first names. Somtimes Guttenberg lists them. If you really ask him: Karl(1) Theodor(2) Maria(3) Nikolaus(4) Johann(5) Jacob(6) Philipp(7) Wilhelm(8) Franz(9) Joseph(10) Sylvester(11)"

(emphasis & numbers mine) So they knew he had 10 names, but never bothered to count the names they copied from Wikipedia)

The summary doesn't tell the full story here. Okay, we don't really know the full story, but we can draw some conclusions from the few articles that are available.

(It's really a pity that even established new outlets like http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,590643,00.html feel threatened by the injuction and hesitate to explain what it's all actually about. How are readers supposed to form an opinion when newspapers are afraid to repeat the original claims?)

So here's what apparently happened: The original article about Heilmann appeared in http://www.hl-live.de/aktuell/text.php?id=47614. Since that's a regular german newspaper, they are required to publish a counterstatement by Heilmann, which they did: http://www.hl-live.de/aktuell/text.php?id=47710

Neither is about his work for the Stasi: What hl-live states is that the immunity against prosecution he enjoys as a member of parliament has been revoked because he threatened a former boyfriend in a text message.

Not sure whether that's true, so let's look at his own counterstatement: He claims his immunity wasn't revoked, but that the commission deciding on immunity issues found that this particular investigation doesn't affect his political work and hence doesn't violate his immunity anyway.

That's kind of weird, because in the next paragraph of his counterstatement he claims that there isn't an investigation in the first place. (What? There's no investigation, yet the commission on immunity bothered to look at that investigation? Something doesn't make sense here.) He also says that he didn't threaten the guy, and that it's not a former boyfriend, just a roommate. He says the guy is an ex-con and that he wanted to encourage him to adhere to his parole conditions. :-) Okay, whatever.

Now enter wikipedia. For a brief time (the paragraph has been removed by now, probably thanks to all the media attention), the wikipedia article on him repeated the claims from hl-live about his revoked immunity, listing only hl-live as a citation.

Which I would argue is both legal and done according to wikipedia citation rules, but also a little fishy. At least they could have had to link to the counterstatement, and perhaps it was a little premature to link to something that's by no means well-documented.

And here's the ugly part regarding the source of the story: hl-live didn't research their article very well. They basically just repeat claim from yet another "newspaper", the infamous german tabloid Bildzeitung. Now that's very stupid, because Bild is known to publish misleading stories as well as out-right lies (see http://www.bildblog.de/ for a blog covering their misdeeds.)

Finally, Heilmann goes berserk and gets an injunction against that weird redirection site wikipedia.de while everyone else continues to use de.wikipedia.org and wouldn't have noticed much without all the media echo.

And while the whole discussion isn't much about his Stasi past at all, he definitely ensured that anyone (if indeed anyone was left who didn't know about it) know learned about his "extended military service" aka work for the Stasi.

BTW, the Stasi part is part of his official bundestag.de resume, so not much of a secret since it all came out a few years ago.

a) In fact, it is Germany's biggest pile of idiocy, lies and bullshit. We even have a watchblog for it.

b) Actually, some do, as that mood is, in some federal states, taught in the 7th grade, if one happens to be on a Gymnasium. (High School for you Americans.) But personally I think that's just an addition by BILD. German pupils, even if they are on a Gymnasium, aren't too keen to learn more moods or tenses. Normally they'd just say "wuerden sterben", as both the actual form of the Konjunktiv II (used for possibilities) and the "wuerde" + infinitive are valid.

Journalistic ethic is a bit like computer scientists' ethic - both have the power to screw up things in a horrible fashion (they misinform people by doing their work badly, we kill jobs by doing our work well) and both more or less follow a certain thic to keep us from abusing said power (they try to monitor themselves, many universities tell first-grade CS students that developing the control systems for cruise missiles is somewhat unethical).

In the end we booth can do what we want - if you want to help develop a better cruise missile there are plenty of defense contractors who are happy to hear that; if they want to write bullshit there's plenty of maggazines, papers and TV stations who will employ them. Like the hippocratic oath, such work ethics are a nice thing to have, but in the end everyone can decide to ignore them. It's better to have them, though - by showing fledgling journalists/scientists/etc. an ideal of how they should be, some do keep aspiring to meet it. Of course they hide behind their ethic, but there often are other reporters who point out how much bullshit they're talking - a nice example for Europe's biggest tabloid would be http://bildblog.de/ [in German].

Just imagine how bad journalists would be if they were told "write anything you want as long as it sounds good" from the get-go. *shivers*

greenpeace just sold it's soul once again by cooperating with the german newspaper 'bild'[1] (equivalent of the english 'the sun') completely ignoring their dubios practises ( http://www.bildblog.de/ ).
Greenpeace Germany: "it's a great chance to reach 12million people on a daily basis".

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,47 7547,00.html

This is much more interesting. Bild published a picture of a boxing event where allegedly a reader captured just the right moment when the referree ended the match. They probably didn't notice that it didn't take a good sense of timing to get that picture, just a video recorder: There's a faint station logo in the top left corner of the picture...

In addition Bild does hardly any additional background checking and verification of images which leads to the publication of other people's intellectual property, funny images found everywhere on the internet, screen grabs of TV shows or sometimes even resubmissions of images previously featured in Bild with different captions. Unless Yahoo and Reuters get their fact checking straight this might have a higher signal to noise ratio than they'd expect and lots of potential for embarassment as well as lawsuits.

this sounds quite good, but there was a better one in Germany:
Some months ago (last september) one media misunderstood an invention of a german engineer who found a way to recycle certain sorts of refuse to diesel and claimed (BILD claimed, not the engineer...), he would do so with dead cats.

The original "news" seems no longer to be available, but bildblog, a blog specialized in doing meta-news on that particular media (no way to call it "newspaper", it's only just crap...) featured an article on that one:

http://www.bildblog.de/?p=791

I admit that while we are generally less sue-happy than you, we also have our fair share of idiots. After all, we have the "BILD", Europe's biggest tabloid, which has a blog (German; Coral Cache) dedicated to nothing but the horrible journalism they do (and which gets about ten reprimends per year from the German Press Counci).

The article on BILD was crap.(like most of the others in Bild). I really can't understand why reuters, dpa and other newpapers are still writing articles based on BILD. Several mistakes in BILD articles are corrected every day on http://www.bildblog.de/ (only german)

They'ld never use Babelfish, because it didn't score well in their test of online translators. Which was another case for BILDblog - because the results prove they didn't use the sentences they said they tested the translators with.

About the cat story:
http://www.bildblog.de/?p=791
(in german language)

by Beryl
Look like a tabloid? It is.
http://www.bildblog.de/wp-content/koch1.jpg
http://www.bildblog.de/wp-content/katzenbenzin2.jp g
(images provided by Bild Blog, explained lower)

And the news is 100% fake with all involved now sueing BILD.

http://bildblog.de/
Scroll down and read "Von Katzen und dummen Menschen" (Of Kats and Dumb People)
(You'll need to learn/know German or use Babelfish)

The blogers are two journalists that investigate BILD.

BILD reported bullshit and everyone else just sucks it up as pathetic the fucktards* they are, the dude even has on webpage that's it completely false and he's suing them for all the shit they're causing from years-old research that has nothing to do wiith what he said.

*Caring only for the shock-effect and not caring about reality, or any annoying thing like that.

http://www.alphakat.de/index.html

""WICHTIGE MITTEILUNG !

Die im Moment in den deutschen Medien verbreiteten Meldungen Dr. Christian Koch würde Katzenkadaver zu Diesel verarbeiten sind absolut falsch und entbehren jeden Bezug zur Realität.
Juristische Maßnahmen gegen diese Behauptungen wurden bereits unternommen."

"Important Notice!

The news currently being spread by certain a German News Agency concerning me using cat cadavers to produce Diesel is utterly wrong and have nothing to do with reality. I have taken legal steps against these accusations."

BILD also completely made up the "cited animal rights activists", and the people in question are enraged - and say they don't care how cadavers are treated as the only care about living animals. Duh.

Bild's also the paper that has titles like MANNER SIND JETZT PORTU-GEIL!!! (Men are now Portu-HORNY!!!" and are plastered with tits every day but Sunday, where they play "innocent Christian"... If you trust them, or even CNN who are about as neutral as Condoleeza Rice, as your only news source...

We do have human shit powered power plants, though...

by Beryl
Look like a tabloid? It is.
http://www.bildblog.de/wp-content/koch1.jpg
http://www.bildblog.de/wp-content/katzenbenzin2.jp g
(images provided by Bild Blog, explained lower)

And the news is 100% fake with all involved now sueing BILD.

http://bildblog.de/
Scroll down and read "Von Katzen und dummen Menschen" (Of Kats and Dumb People)
(You'll need to learn/know German or use Babelfish)

The blogers are two journalists that investigate BILD.

BILD reported bullshit and everyone else just sucks it up as pathetic the fucktards* they are, the dude even has on webpage that's it completely false and he's suing them for all the shit they're causing from years-old research that has nothing to do wiith what he said.

*Caring only for the shock-effect and not caring about reality, or any annoying thing like that.

http://www.alphakat.de/index.html

""WICHTIGE MITTEILUNG !

Die im Moment in den deutschen Medien verbreiteten Meldungen Dr. Christian Koch würde Katzenkadaver zu Diesel verarbeiten sind absolut falsch und entbehren jeden Bezug zur Realität.
Juristische Maßnahmen gegen diese Behauptungen wurden bereits unternommen."

"Important Notice!

The news currently being spread by certain a German News Agency concerning me using cat cadavers to produce Diesel is utterly wrong and have nothing to do with reality. I have taken legal steps against these accusations."

BILD also completely made up the "cited animal rights activists", and the people in question are enraged - and say they don't care how cadavers are treated as the only care about living animals. Duh.

Bild's also the paper that has titles like MANNER SIND JETZT PORTU-GEIL!!! (Men are now Portu-HORNY!!!" and are plastered with tits every day but Sunday, where they play "innocent Christian"... If you trust them, or even CNN who are about as neutral as Condoleeza Rice, as your only news source...

We do have human shit powered power plants, though...

by Beryl
Look like a tabloid? It is.
http://www.bildblog.de/wp-content/koch1.jpg
http://www.bildblog.de/wp-content/katzenbenzin2.jp g
(images provided by Bild Blog, explained lower)

And the news is 100% fake with all involved now sueing BILD.

http://bildblog.de/
Scroll down and read "Von Katzen und dummen Menschen" (Of Kats and Dumb People)
(You'll need to learn/know German or use Babelfish)

The blogers are two journalists that investigate BILD.

BILD reported bullshit and everyone else just sucks it up as pathetic the fucktards* they are, the dude even has on webpage that's it completely false and he's suing them for all the shit they're causing from years-old research that has nothing to do wiith what he said.

*Caring only for the shock-effect and not caring about reality, or any annoying thing like that.

http://www.alphakat.de/index.html

""WICHTIGE MITTEILUNG !

Die im Moment in den deutschen Medien verbreiteten Meldungen Dr. Christian Koch würde Katzenkadaver zu Diesel verarbeiten sind absolut falsch und entbehren jeden Bezug zur Realität.
Juristische Maßnahmen gegen diese Behauptungen wurden bereits unternommen."

"Important Notice!

The news currently being spread by certain a German News Agency concerning me using cat cadavers to produce Diesel is utterly wrong and have nothing to do with reality. I have taken legal steps against these accusations."

BILD also completely made up the "cited animal rights activists", and the people in question are enraged - and say they don't care how cadavers are treated as the only care about living animals. Duh.

Bild's also the paper that has titles like MANNER SIND JETZT PORTU-GEIL!!! (Men are now Portu-HORNY!!!" and are plastered with tits every day but Sunday, where they play "innocent Christian"... If you trust them, or even CNN who are about as neutral as Condoleeza Rice, as your only news source...

We do have human shit powered power plants, though...

The story was first run by "Bild", the biggest german yellow press paper, that turned quotes like "we don't care what he does with dead animals" to "what a cruelty!"
The whole article is utter bullshit, more can be found here.
Use your favourite babelfish to translate. :)

This news is simply no news. Its a story entirely made up by the biggest german tabloid called Bild. Everyone in Germany with a little education knows that Bild lies in every second line. It's sad to see that even CNN and Reuters fall for stories made up by Bild. I have been in the States for six months and i do have to say that i was amused by the "news" being broadcasted first which soon shifted for me to feel sorry for you guys over there. Unfortunatly there seem too few people having a critical approach to what the news tell them and who inform themselves from really different sources. This is a link to a german blog by journalists that monitor Bild covering the "cat-fuel" article: http://www.bildblog.de/?p=791 It's german, don't know if babelfish etc will be able to translate it properly.

Yes right. And the mother of all watchblogs already has their article on it, too: http://www.bildblog.de/?p=791 (german language) ;) David

...for both CNN and slashdot. Seriously, Bild is the world's largest tabloid newspaper, and probably the worst of all of them.

Making fuel out of organic waste is nothing really new or revolutionary. Using dead animals for this is not illegal at all.

Read more at http://www.bildblog.de/?p=791 (German)
Babelfish translation http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pag econtent?lp=de_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bildblog.de %2F%3Fp%3D791

That's just a hoax of our famous 'newspaper' called Bild. If you can read German, visit the Bildblog, a blog dedicated to debunk all of Bilds hoaxes. In the meantime, Dr. Christian Koch put a note on his website, declining that he is using dead cats to produce fuel.

They don't see anything wrong here.
Bild not only reported a non-story, because the guy never made diesel out of cats, nor does he intend to do, but also misquoted the Animal Rights Activists.
http://www.bildblog.de/?p=791 (Sorry, only in German)

This was a story by BILD, the world's largest tabloid newspaper. It is nicely rebuked at Bildblog.de which is a meta-blog following BILD and exposing it's errors, bias and lies. The company ("Alphakat") simply develops a method to process waste as a kind of Bio-Diesel.