BORN TO FAKE

In 1996, one of the biggest media scandals in Germany to date shook the public: Michael Born, a self-made journalist, had faked over 20 reports for the newly emerged private television between 1990 and 1996. Some were amateurish, others featured absurd topics: child labour for Ikea in India, drug addicts licking toads to get high, and the Ku Klux Klan in the Eifel are just a few of the many fabrications.

How could it come to this? Was Michael Born a whistleblower who subversively exposed the tabloid system, or was he simply a fraudster?

A media-theoretical film challenging our perceptions of truth in an era of fake news and media manipulation, and posing the question of why we believe what we see.