One should not defend Claas Relotius, the master forger from the "Spiegel" magazine . Especially not if one is a journalist oneself. After all, in his short career he has damaged the credibility of all of us. And anyone who glosses over even one detail of his colorful toolbox of creative writing is suspected of not being too strict about the truth at work.
Because no one is allowed to do it, no one singapore rcs data does it, but "someone has to do it," as the German pop icon Herwig Mitteregger once sang. Because it is good that Relotius was exposed, and it is right that he lost his job because he was intolerable. But the way his case is currently being blown up into a kind of second Watergate is disproportionate.
Overall, Relotius is indeed an imposter. But it is still not forbidden to divide his actions into "really bad" and "a little bit bad". Because he has developed two techniques that are, in my view, differently reprehensible.