Berlin // German media and politicians warned on Friday against an election-year spike in fake news after the ultraconservative US website Breitbart.com claimed a mob chanting "Allahu Akbar" set fire to a church on New Year's Eve.
The report was widely shared on social media, prompting police in the city of Dortmund to clarify that no "extraordinary or spectacular" incidents had marred the festivities.
The local newspaper, Ruhr Nachrichten, said elements of its online reporting on New Year's Eve had been distorted to produce "fake news, hate and propaganda".
Tens of thousands clicked and shared the Breitbart story with the headline: "Revealed: 1,000-Man Mob Attack Police, Set Germany's Oldest Church Alight on New Year's Eve".
It said the men had "chanted 'Allahu Akbar', launched fireworks at police, and set fire to a historic church", while also massing "around the flag of Al Qaeda and Islamic State collaborators the 'Free Syrian Army'."
Ruhr Nachrichten said Breitbart had combined and exaggerated unconnected incidents to create a picture of chaos and of foreigners celebrating terrorism.
Stray fireworks did indeed start a small blaze, but only on netting covering scaffolding on the church, and it was put out after about 12 minutes, the newspaper said. The roof was not on fire and the church is not Germany's oldest.
The controversy highlights a deepening divide between supporters of chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal stance toward refugees and a right-wing movement that opposes immigration, fears Islam and distrusts the government and media.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily said Breitbart had used exaggerations and factual errors to create "an image of chaotic civil warlike conditions in Germany, caused by Islamist aggressors".
It said the article "may be a foretaste" of what was to come ahead of parliamentary elections expected in September as some websites spread "misinformation and distortion in order to diminish trust in established institutions".
Justice minister Heiko Maas in mid-December warned that Germany would use its laws against deliberate disinformation, and that freedom of expression did not protect "slander and defamation".
Germany's top-selling Bild daily also saw more trouble ahead, pointing to appointment of Breitbart's former editor Steve Bannon as US president-elect Donald Trump's chief strategist.
It warned that Breitbart - a platform for the so-called "alt-right" movement, with plans to launch German and French language sites - could seek to "aggravate the tense political climate in Germany".
* Agence France-Presse
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