Why Germany Is Cracking Down on Fake News
Since accurate reports of sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve in 2015, there has been a “disturbing pattern” in which false stories, like the sex mob story in Bild, have focused on sexual abuse of women.
The story played on some of Germany’s worst fears.
Just after 1 a.m. on New Year's Day, in a crowded bar in Frankfurt, a group of roughly 50 “Arab” men, as the bar’s owner, Jan Mai, later said, stumbled in and soon began to dance, push and grope female customers, some of them putting their hands up the women’s skirts.
It was a “sex mob,” involving “masses” of migrants, or at least that’s how Bild, a popular German tabloid, described it after an interview with Mai. The story went viral on social media after right-wing outlets like Breitbart News picked it up.
The only witness in the story besides Mai was “Irina A.,” a woman in her 20s, who did not give her last. “They grabbed me under the skirt, between my legs, my breasts, everywhere.”
