Seven year veteran of Germany's Der Spiegel Claas Relotius was fired after the news came out the fellow didn't much care to do reporting or journalism and had simply been fabricating stories and winning awards for doing it. As recently as December 3rd of this year Relotius was lauded by his peers as THE German reporter of the year:

The jury for the 2018 German Reporter Award was once again of the opinion that he had written the best feature story of the year, this one about a Syrian boy who lived with the belief that he had contributed to the country's civil war through a graffito he had daubed onto a wall in Daraa. The jurors praised the article for its "unparalleled lightness, intimacy and relevance that is never silent regarding the sources on which it is based."

– Source

And in Der Spiegel's own telling:

It has now become clear that Claas Relotius, 33 years old, one of DER SPIEGEL's best writers, winner of multiple awards and a journalistic idol of his generation, is neither a reporter nor a journalist. Rather, he produces beautifully narrated fiction. Truth and lies are mixed together in his articles and some, at least according to him, were even cleanly reported and free of fabrication. Others, he admits, were embellished with fudged quotes and other made-up facts. Still others were entirely fabricated.

Relotius and Der Spiegel's fraud were undone by a woman from rural Arizona who took issue with a report slandering a local US border integrity activism group she is afflilated with. As per their usual modus operandi, Relotius fabricated a fiction demonizing bloodthirsty nationalist vigilanties while Der Spiegel happily published the creative writing exercise instead as "truth from the front lines."