Lizzie Borden and the Fact Checker
Please allow me this little rant. I read with increasing frequency of best selling books that are being “recalled” because the authors have plagiarized portions of their works, have decided that making up facts in order to prove some point is a valid way to present history, or fabricated quotes or sources in books and news reports.
Four recent cases need mentioning. The first is the story of Jonah Lehrer, the writer for The New Yorker magazine who was caught red-handed by a blogger making up quotes by Bob Dylan and forced to resign his position. His is an odd story if only for the fact that if you have ANY understanding of icon Dylan you must know that there are literally legions of people who study every single word the man says in interviews, in concerts, and off the cuff in order to discern some clue into this enigmatic poet’s meaning. His lyrics have become the subject of countless books and web sites, and to think you can get away with putting words into Dylan’s mouth is tantamount to journalistic suicide. So he was caught. And it wasn’t from his writings for The New Yorker, it was from falsified quotes in a book about imagination. Lehrer had previously been caught by this employer reusing old stories, which is like plagiarizing yourself. The problem with this practice is that as a writer you are being paid to produce new work, and to reuse previously published stuff, even if you are the author, is journalistic anathema. Now that he has been relieved of his duties, and his reputation shattered in the process, the publishers have started fact checking his other book and have likewise found problems.
A spokeswoman for Lehrer’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, told the Times that the company is currently “exploring all options” regarding Imagine and that, for now, it has halted shipments of the printed book and plans to take the e-book off the market.
Next comes the story of a reporter who was caught serial fabricating sources. He was caught, fired, and his “in-depth reporting award” was revoked.
After a month-long independent investigation, the Connecticut chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists revoked a first place “in-depth reporting†award for a Hearst reporter who was recently fired for fabricating sources.
In June, David McCumber, former editorial director of the Hearst Connecticut Media Group, which owns the Darien News and New Canaan News weekly newspapers, said 25 stories over the last year and a half used “quotes from non-existent stories.†McCumber said every story in the 22 months Jha had written for the organization was being scrutinized for fabrication.
The third story comes to us because of what the publisher calls “a number of people expressing concerns about The Jefferson Lie,” a best seller by evangelical “historian” David Barton. This story is heating up the airwaves at present, and is a cautionary tale about not believing everything, or in this case anything, you read.
For example, Barton claims Jefferson was an investor in an early American printing of the Bible, when Throckmorton [Warren Throckmorton, a psychology professor at Grove City College in Grove City, Pa.] says Jefferson only bought one copy.
Barton wrote that Virginia laws banned Jefferson from freeing the more than 200 slaves he owned.
“That’s not true,†Throckmorton said. “Jefferson freed two slaves, one in 1794 and one in 1796. So you can’t say he didn’t free slaves, because he did free two slaves.â€
Barton said Throckmorton is wrong. He said he has documents to back up all the claims in his book.
For example, he said the laws in Jefferson’s time fined owners who freed slaves, and Jefferson would have freed his slaves if he could have. He said Throckmorton doesn’t understand how complex the laws about freeing slaves were.
. Link.
Most telling is the publisher, Thomas Nelson, saying this to reporters covering this story:
“We carefully edit every book we publish, and we rely on the expertise of our authors concerning their subjects,†she said. “It is extremely rare that the company would have to withdraw a book from the market based on concerns about its content.â€
Pardon me if I shake my head with incredulity.
And the last of the recent spate of publishing problems involves a highly regarded journalist, Fareed Zakaria. I respect Fareed. I watch his show Fareed Zakaria GPS every Sunday. He presents an informed look at international politics and geopolitical history. It is a big deal when this guy does something like this, and gets caught. So what did he do?
Zakaria lifted several passages from an article by historian Jill Lepore that was published by the New Yorker magazine in April. … In a brief interview Friday with The Post, Zakaria said he has apologized to Lepore. He had no further comment. Zakaria said in a statement earlier Friday that he made “a terrible mistake. . . . It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault.â€
Link.
The Washington Post, where Zakaria is employed as an op-ed writer, is investigating all of his past columns for further cases of plagiarism.
And of course there have been other cases in recent history where such unnecessary behavior has been uncovered. Names like Doris Kearns Goodwin (who claims that her lifted quotes were inadvertent), David McCullough (who “misread” a crucial war document in his bestseller Truman), Alex Haley (who was caught fabricating family history and making up a great portion of his book Roots), Jason Blair (who was fired in 2003 by the New York Times for fabricating stories), James Frey (author of the phenomenally best selling, Oprah approved, A Million Little Pieces, who exaggerated and fabricated stories about his time in prison), Gerald Posner (resigned from his job as chief investigative reporter for The Daily Beast for plagiarism), Michael Daisy (discredited and “humiliated” for his fabrications and exaggerations of the working conditions at Chinese plants producing Apple products), and Mike Barnicle of the Boston Globe, now a regular on Morning Joe on MSNBC (who lost his job for faking stories and stealing other people’s writing):
Now known for his frequent presence on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,†Barnicle was forced to resign from the Boston Globe in 1998 after plagiarizing the comedian George Carlin in a column. Barnicle had troubles dating back to 1973, when a court ruled Barnicle made up a quote and the Globe was forced to pay $40,000 in damages. In 1990, he quoted Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz as saying he likes Asian women because they’re “submissive.†The Globe paid $75,000 in a settlement after Dershowitz sued.
Of course, the individuals doing the unethical behavior are responsible for their actions, but I think that the publishers and editors are equally guilty here, even if no one else feels this way.
These things should have been discovered BEFORE they appeared in print, and excuses such as “we don’t have the finances to staff a fact-checker” and “we expect professional reviewers to catch these issues” are not only bogus, but are irresponsible.
Yes, it costs money to pay an expert fact-checker to ensure accuracy in published works. But how much is your reputation worth? How many cases of this type do we, the reading public, accept before a tipping point is reached and publishers are forced to do that which they should have been doing all along? And when are they going to accept responsibility for the authors that they profit from? The journalistic ethical crumble should extend UP the food chain, and heads should roll for these transgressions. Profit over proof seems to be the current watchword in the publishing business.
Not so with PearTree Press. Our flagship product, The Hatchet: A Journal of Lizzie Borden and Victorian Studies, in its seventh year of publication, is meticulously fact-checked, proofread, and edited, all in an effort to correct any problems before our readership is able to view its contents. We PRIDE ourselves on this promise, and sometimes the fact-checking portion of the process is very labor intensive. It does cost money to hire an expert for this work, but I can honestly say that it is money well spent. When you lose the trust of the reading public, you have nothing left.
So here’s to our fact-checker. Her name is Kat Koorey and she knows her stuff. Without her, The Hatchet would not be the serious work of historical investigation that it is. Without her, there would be no Hatchet.