Category: Fraud, MSM and otherwise

Here on Fishbowl we use Seth Mnookin as the go-to guy on matters of transparency in journalism and scrupulous fact-checking, and also the word "Mnookin" makes us giggle. But his writing is certainly not limited to those subjects, nor is has his experience been. Which is why he's uniquely qualified to write about James Frey : yes, he knows about accuracy and journalistic standards, but he also happens to know about being a junkie.

Coming from that experience, says Mnookin, he could already tell that Frey was fudging something fierce, especially based on the "stock characters" cramming the book, starting with the "world-weary anti-hero" and continuing with the small-minded people who didn't understand him. Says Mnook:

If a novelist wrote a book run through with these kind of straight-from-Central-Casting chestnuts, he'd be politely told to try again...as Frey says he was, by 17 different publishers, before, Frey says, Doubleday's Nan Talese said she'd publish his novel if he recast it as a memoir.

Yikes. Burn on Oprah, and a point for Gay Talese.

Mnookin looks at Frey's fabrications through the lens of his own brutal experience, which definitely provides some insight, but his main point is less about Frey's motivations than the consequences of his actions: letting a false picture of addiction be held up as the truth, to the detriment of people who really need the help (and the people who would help them). This, of course, is "why his fakery matters":

Unfortunately, because A Million Little Pieces --- one of the best selling books about drug addiction ever written -- has been trumpeted as an unflinching, real-life look into the world of a drug addict, it has helped to shape people's notions about drug abuse... Frey has set himself up as the one, truth-telling savior.

The truth matters, and so does the truth about the truth.

Picking Up the Pieces: How James Frey flunked rehab, and why his fakery matters.

Related:
The End of My World as I Knew It [Slate]
Harvard and heroin [Salon]
My Son, the junkie [Salon]

Oh, how meta - a debunked story about a debunked story! The report, carried by Reuters and Yahoo and others* claimed that Random House was offering "unprecedented" refunds for A Million Little Pieces. Not so, says Random House: "Contrary to erroneous published reports, Random House, Inc. is not offering a special refund on A Million Little Pieces... Yesterday we had 15 calls to our customer service line specific to A Million Little Pieces and fewer than that today."

Larry King also contradicted the erroneous reports on his show last night, on which Frey was the guest. Frey called the book a "subjective retelling" of true events as "an individual's perceptions of what happens in his own life," and stood behind the "essential truths" of the story. Most significant get for Larry: a phone call from Oprah Winfrey standing firmly behind Frey and the book, saying that "the underlying message of redemption" still resonated, with her and with millions of readers. Oprah saves publishing, hooray!

Full GalleyCat item here; our original erroneous item after the jump, for posterity's sake and also because we think it has the makings of a good memoir.

NB Please note that Fishbowl corrected this post before CNN corrected this or Reuters corrected this. Please also note that CNN posted this story at 12:32 am, after Larry King's program. On CNN.

Frey Grilled a la King [GC]
Writer Says He Made Up Some Details [NYT]

*Late-breaking story on the CBC.

continued...

Drama on the Senate floor! The Democrats finally score one off the Republicans, taking them by surprise (and somewhat by force) in demanding a closed-door meeting of the Senate in order to take the Bush Administration to taks for the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq.

The Republicans are outraged! Bill Frist says the Dems have "no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas"! (They also have no idea how to effectively dump stock in a hurtin' family corporation, but that's another story). Trent Lott said that the move violated the Senate tradition of courtesy and consent! Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts hid in the back of the Senate chamber, or maybe just wanted to get closer to Frist! Consider the following:

In a speech on the Senate floor, Reid demanded the Senate go into closed session. The public was ordered out of the chamber, the lights were dimmed, and the doors were closed.

Is it me or does that remind you of the kind of movie where the hot, burly plumber arrives to "fix a leak"? No? So I'm alone in finding the Senate mildly frisky? All right, then. You people are made of stone.

(Sorry, we're clearly channelling CBS'John D. Roberts)

Democrats Force Senate Into Iraq Meeting [AP via Salon]

This is a little embarrassing - we've all let the ball drop massively on the Downing Street Memo, which became public on May 1st and actually broke as an MSM story oh, yesterday. In Salon Eric Boehlert does a good job of tracing the non-response, and framing the memo in context with its implications, namely that by July 2002, the Bush Administration had decided to invade Iraq heedless of any U.N. processes, and were already marshalling the facts and intelligence to justify the war based on terrorism and WMD, rather than, say, the truth)(relevant paragraph from memo after the jump). Oh yes, and there was no exit strategy (which we were reminded of anew just a few weeks ago).

So. This memo was out there for almost six weeks, and it barely registered. Why? Maybe because it's not big news that there were, uh, 'factual irregularities' regarding the justification for going to war (WMD, hi) - is it news to confirm what you basically already know? Sploid thought so on May 12 ("White House Won't Answer Iraq Memo"), noting baldly:

It's been 12 days since the Times of London printed the damning U.K. memo proving that the White House intentionally invented the "need" for invading Iraq, despite knowing there was no WMD. The once-secret memo shows that Tony Blair knew all of this long before the U.N. performance by Colin Powell, and that Downing Street saw the U.S. invasion as "inevitable." The White House refuses to answer 89 members of Congress who formally demanded explanations more than a week ago. (Here Sploid links to CNN, by the way).

Even before officially taking up his post, NYT Public Editor Barney Calame was calling out the Times for their negligible Downing St. coverage: "...key editors simply were slow to recognize that the minutes of a high-powered meeting on a life-and-death issue -- their authenticity undisputed -- probably needed to be assessed in some fashion for readers."

But otherwise, the MSM was largely silent. Per Boehlert:

Until Tuesday, the number of U.S. newspaper articles reporting on the Downing Street memo could be counted on two hands, including two articles in the New York Times, two in the Washington Post (print edition), and one each in Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Chicago Tribune. Only the Chicago Tribune article ran on Page 1, and it focused on how little commotion the memo had caused in the United States, noting, "The White House has denied the premise of the memo, the American media have reacted slowly to it and the public generally seems indifferent to the issue or unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar debate over the reasons for the war."

Well, the issue is out there now. It's true we've been distracted by Newsweek, Saddam's underpants and the drama of Deep Throat, but in hindsight it seems crazy that this could fall so neatly through the cracks (very Darfur-esque, no?). Six weeks later, it's too early to tell if it will stick. Too bad we can't say the same about the war.

UPDATE: The CJR addressed this back on May 20th with an interesting observation: "Sometimes news outlets given to echoing each other can echo silence instead of noise. This is the story of one such silence -- one now interrupted by the distant rumble of unhappy readers questioning the silence itself." Let's see how this one echoes...

Bush lied about war? Nope, no news there!
Why did it take more than a month for the U.S. press to report on the serious revelations in the Downing Street memo? [Salon]
The Memo Comes In From the Cold [WaPo]
Barney Calame: Where's the Downing Street coverage? [NYT Public Editor's Forum]
After Downing Street [AfterDowningStreet.org]

continued...

Wired News is the latest in the series of beleaguered publications addressing plagiarism, improper attribution, and fabulism in their ranks.

Journalism prof and Wired News columnist Adam Penenberg (the original Stephen Glass whistle-blower) was asked to review stories by contributor Michelle Delio after MIT Tecnology Review Online and InfoWorld publications edited her work to address unconfirmed/unattributed quotes. After reviewing 160 recent articles (of the over 700 written by Delio), Penenberg found 24 stories with sources he couldn't confirm, four wherein the quotes played a major role.

Delio stands by her reporting and Wired News isn't retracting, but it is going to limit the use of anonymous sources (it will require "appropriate justification") and freelancers will now be required to submit source contact information when they file.

A complete history of the Delio affair can be found at webzine-not-blog Gelf Magazine, who began investigating the question of Delio's sourcing after the Technology Review retracted Delio's pieces (they also shadowed Penenberg's investigation).

According to AP, Delio sent her Wired News editors an email saying "I don't understand why my credibility and career is now hanging solely on finding minor sources that contributed color quotes to stories I filed months and years ago," she wrote.

Probe Can't Confirm Sources in Freelancer's Stories for 'Wired News'[AP via E&P]
Wired News Releases Source Review [Wired News]

RELATED: Interview with Adam Penenberg [Gelf Magazine]

Folio Magazine's Dylan Stableford uncovers fabricator/journalistic pariah Jayson Blair's latest gig: a column for "BP Hope" magazine, a publication serving the 2.5 million Americans afflicted with bipolar disorder.

In the column, Blair cops to having the condition and describes the pressures of "trying to accomplish my job" (and, according to Stableford, a recovery that includes "medication and speaking engagements").

"Like Icarus, I soared like an eagle," Blair writes, "but fell with a shattered wing." Actually, Icarus fell to earth with a melted wing but why quibble over details? We know you won't.

While Mitch Albom's non-punishment by the Detroit Free Press is inflaming debate out here, on the left coast the intrepid reporters at the Contra Costa Times smoked out their very own fraud: compulsive letter-writer Kyle Vallone, who concocted a variety of identities under which to submit letters to the editor of various Bay-area newspapers. A model of discretion, he'd also send an angry email whenever a letter wasn't published. Eventually, reporter Sarah Krupp connected the dots and exposed him as someone with a great deal of time on his hands.

According to Krupp, Vallone "is most proud of coming up with the name Batswala Dala." Sure, pretty cute--when high school students do it.

How the 'Contra Costa Times' Uncovered a Letters-to-the-Editor Scam [E&P via Romenesko]
Letter writer fools Bay papers with various noms de plume [Contra Costa Times]
RELATED, and still hilarious: To The Editor [The New Yorker]