Too much of a stretch but it is an odd coincidence

From The Relotius Case - Answers to the Most Important Questions from Der Spiegel. Janet Cook, Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass - Claas Relotius joins the pantheon of journalists continuing to imperil the media reputation for accuracy.

Claas Relotius, a reporter and editor, falsified his articles on a grand scale and even invented characters, deceiving both readers and his colleagues. This has been uncovered as a result of tips, internal research and, ultimately, a comprehensive confession by the editor himself.

[snip]

Relotius first wrote for DER SPIEGEL as a freelancer, but he was employed as an editor for the past year and a half. Since 2011, just under 60 of his articles were published in DER SPIEGEL magazine or on SPIEGEL ONLINE. By his own admission, there are at least 14 articles in question that are at least in part fabrications. Is he to be believed? Could that figure actually be considerably higher? The only thing that can be stated with certainty right now is that the work in uncovering that has only just begun.

[snip]

That cannot be ruled out at this point in time. Relotius also worked for other media organizations in Germany and abroad. During his time as a freelance journalist, his work got published by other media including Cicero, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag, the Financial Times Deutschland, Die Tageszeitung, Die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Weltwoche, Zeit Online and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

In addition, from another report,

Spiegel reported that Relotius, who previously worked for other publications and won a CNN Journalist of the Year award in 2014, has resigned after admitting to inventing interviews.

It would be easy to harangue media for their carelessness. That is a lot of "top tier" news organizations who did not catch some basic reporting problems for several years.

But perhaps this is related to a larger phenomenon. Science in general, but especially the soft sciences of sociology, anthropology, psychology are going through a replication crisis in which it is being discovered that many, and in some fields, most, foundational papers cannot be replicated. Sometimes fraud, sometimes carelessness.

Is there perhaps a broader issue that the humanities simply are no longer well-grounded in empirical realism? That people are no longer especially concerned about rigor and accuracy and are comfortable with truthiness?

It is quite a stretch but there certainly seems in many fields to be an ever greater casualness about precision and accuracy.

UPDATE: From Don’t Mess With Fergus Falls by Rod Dreher.

Claas Relotius apparently visited and reported on/made up stuff about Fergus Falls in Minnesota as part of the mainstream media cultural anthropology campaign to understand the lower life forms of flyover-America who voted for Trump. Apparently some of the residents took exception to the preferred MSM "fake but accurate" mode of reporting.