Publishers Say Fact-Checking Is Too Costly (Dino Media Extinction Alert)

Wall Street Journal ^ | Jan 30, 2006 | JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG

[abb]

Last Thursday, publishing-industry veteran Nan Talese was excoriated on television by Oprah Winfrey for publishing James Frey's 2003 "A Million Little Pieces," a bestselling memoir about the author's struggle to overcome drug dependency that he has since admitted is partly fictitious.

But on Friday morning, Ms. Talese walked into 22nd-floor offices in Midtown Manhattan to a standing ovation from her colleagues. Soon afterward, she received a call of support from Peter Olson, chief executive of Bertelsmann AG's Random House Inc. publishing arm.

"I've gotten more than 500 emails over the last few days, and the overwhelming majority have been supportive," says Ms. Talese whose imprint, Nan A. Talese, is part of Random House's Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group.

Indeed, many members of the publishing industry have rallied around Ms. Talese and Random House, saying that they would have published "A Million Little Pieces" as well and could have been duped just as easily. Unlike journalists, publishers have never seen it as their purview to verify that the information in nonfiction books is true. Editors and publishers say the profit-margins in publishing don't allow for hiring fact-checkers. Instead, they rely on authors to be honest, and on their legal staffs to avoid libels suits. "An author brings a manuscript saying it represents the truth, and that relationship is one of trust," says Ms. Tale

[starbase]

You inspired me to look it up. Here's a little blurb about it from Google:

The greatest and most recent theft of Aboriginal identity was by Leon Carmen, alias Wanda Koolmatrie, author of the book My Own Sweet Time. In March 1997, Leon Carmen, a 47-year-old white male, admitted he had invented the persona of Wanda Koolmatrie, allegedly a descendant of the Pitjantjatara people in South Australia and a member of the stolen generation.
Source

[dennisw]

And don't forget our most recent fake Indian who made millions from his phony baloney books

Former NC author's work on Indian life called fake Myrtle Beach Sun News, SC - Jan 27, 2006 RALEIGH, NC - A former Chapel Hill author isn't the Navajo Indian he claimed in nationally acclaimed memoirs about his troubled childhood growing up in the ...

[Little Ray]

Dunno. They could always attach
"This book contains the beliefs and opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the those of the publisher. We're just in for the money. Also, the "facts" were provided by the author and were not subject to peer review. You're on your own."

Put it just inside the front cover.

[LS]

Possibly. I'm not confident about "reforming" the university, either from within or without. I liken it more to the MSM, which had to be replaced by something totally different.

[mo]

its intersting to hear your take on university...I've often held that from a capital investment perspective, there is little reason today for such an institution, given the cost.

[LS]

Perhaps, but that also insulates it, because it is cost-prohibitive to move into the oligopoly. We ain't losing students: our enrollments grow every year, even though we jack up tuition every year even more.

[nmh]

That's a thought.


Believer beware of these "facts"?

[mo]

Term limits would neuter this oligopoly...permanently.

[LS]

Won't work. You are focusing COMPLETELY on the wrong thing. Changing the profs won't change the oligopoly that the schools have with state legislatures and federal student aid. It's the AID that allows schools to jack up tuitions. (BTW, not complaining, but the faculty only gets 3% of tuition increases, according to Richard Vedder's book, "Going Broke by Degree.") Vedder is a great place to start to understand the dynamic of why colleges will NOT be overturned by anything on the horizon right now. It will take a true educational revolution.

[Publius6961]

Unlike journalists, publishers have never seen it as their purview to verify that the information in nonfiction books is true. Editors and publishers say the profit-margins in publishing don't allow for hiring fact-checkers.

What a sad, self-serving view!
The reality, that as a result, they are "pushing" fiction as non-fiction seems to totally evade their limited view of integrity: perpetrating a fraud and using the lame excuse of "profit margin" as justification.

The really maddening and permanent result is that many of these "non-fiction" books push lies and propaganda as reality, and after it is repeated often enough, it is presumed "fact" in the Hilary" sense:

...they studied Hillary's speechmaking method to understand her power and success. They concluded: her trick was never actually to make any arguments -- just state conclusions that were all already accepted as self-evident by her audience.