TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/082189/08218900.067

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 4KB | 62 lines

PRESS, Page 49

The Right to Fake Quotes

A journalist's legal victory raises questions about ethics

By William A. Henry III


    Journalism at best only approximates reality, because writers
must inevitably select and compress. If they cannot cram in the
whole truth, however, they can be expected to deliver the truth and
nothing but -- especially between quotation marks. The very use of
that punctuation signals a special claim to credibility: this is
not judgment but unfiltered fact.

    To the consternation of many journalists, however, the meaning
of those quotation marks has been blurred by a three-judge panel
of the U.S. appeals court in California. In a 2-to-1 vote, the
judges this month dismissed a libel suit by psychoanalyst Jeffrey
Masson against New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm, holding that a
writer may misquote a subject -- even deliberately -- as long as
the sense is not substantially changed. Malcolm's articles
attributed to Masson some dozen phrases he contends were altered
or fabricated. Most offensive to him was a supposed
self-characterization as an "intellectual gigolo."

    The court ruled that even if Masson did not say those words,
Malcolm's inventions were permissible because they did not "alter
the substantive content" of what he actually said, or were a
"rational interpretation" of his comments. Judge Alex Kozinski
fiercely dissented: "While courts have a grave responsibility under
the First Amendment to safeguard freedom of the press, the right
to deliberately alter quotations is not, in my view, a concomitant
of a free press."

    The decision reinforced the rigorous standard of evidence
imposed on public figures who sue for libel, and struck some
journalists as reasonable in that context. Editor Eugene Roberts
of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, "After every press conference,
where often you can't hear very well, you will see three or four
variations on the same quote. Just about every time, the intent was
preserved." To others, the victory seemed Pyrrhic. Said editor Bill
Monroe of the Washington Journalism Review: "I don't see how any
journalist can be happy with a judge condoning tampering with
specific quotes."

    Last March, as Masson's suit was pending, Malcolm sparked a
debate about press ethics with a New Yorker article that began,
"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to
notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally
indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's
vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying
them without remorse." Although she focused on a ruptured
relationship between author Joe McGinniss (Fatal Vision) and his
subject, murderer Jeffrey MacDonald, many readers assumed that
Malcolm was writing confessionally, if unknowingly, about herself.

    That controversy proved fleeting, but the impact of the Masson
case will probably linger. Journalists publicize any prominent
reporter's willful lapse from factuality because they consider it
uncommon, hence newsworthy; the irony is that the coverage prompts
many readers to assume that such failings are widespread. Many a
journalist has felt the temptation, as Malcolm allegedly did,
either to skip the drudgery of poring over notes or, having perused
them in vain, to concoct the perfect quote to make the point. Such
behavior may be legal. But as every journalist knows, it is, in
Malcolm's own words, "morally indefensible."