For the first time, a disgruntled subject has been permitted to sue a writer on grounds that render irrelevant the truth or falsity of what was published. . . . Now, for the first time, a journalist’s demeanor and point of view throughout the entire creative process have become an issue to be resolved by jury trial. . . . The MacDonald claim suggests that newspaper and magazine reporters, as well as authors, can and will be sued for writing truthful but unflattering articles should they ever have acted in a fashion that indicated a sympathetic attitude toward their interview subject. Proves without a doubt that even masters of the universe sometimes lose their heads, and then their shirts.

The Journalist and the Murderer—I - The New Yorker The Journalist and the Murderer—I - The New Yorker

Among Janet Malcolm’s many memorable sentences, the one whose repetition wearied her opened a two-part article that was published by the New Yorker magazine in March 1989. The piece’s title was The Journalist and the Murderer and in the following year it appeared as a book – one of several by Malcolm, who has died of lung cancer aged 86, that warned readers of narrative nonfiction, especially journalism and biography, that the truth was never simple; that it wasn’t buried conveniently like treasure, to be discovered and faithfully recounted by some sufficiently inquisitive and all-knowing narrator; that everything was subjective, fluid and incomplete. Segal felt constrained to change the final period to a comma and to add these words: “provided that the essential integrity of my life story is maintained.” Eight years later, in the MacDonald-McGinniss suit, it became MacDonald’s contention that the “essential integrity” of his life story had not been maintained in McGinniss’s book, and that McGinniss was guilty of a kind of soul murder, for which it was necessary that he be brought to account. The federal judge assigned to the case, William Rea, also seemed to hear the Commendatore’s music wafting out of the complaint and, in his denial of McGinniss’s motion for summary judgment, to concur with the plaintiff’s moralistic view of the case. MacDonald went to Princeton on a scholarship in 1961 (he was apparently the first student from Patchogue High School to go to an Ivy League college), then to Northwestern University Medical School, and then to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, in New York, for his internship. In the summer following his sophomore year at Princeton and her sophomore year at Skidmore, MacDonald’s girlfriend Colette Stevenson became pregnant. The couple decided against abortion and were married in the fall of 1963. Colette left Skidmore, and Kimberly was born in Princeton; Kristen was born in Illinois. Photographs show Colette to have been a pretty, blond girl with a soft, rounded face; all accounts of her stress her reserve, her quietness, her kindliness, and her conventional femininity. At the time of her death, she was taking an evening course in psychology at the North Carolina State University extension at Fort Bragg. Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer (1990) is, among other things, a polemic assailing several kinds of naivety about the dubious relationship between a journalist and their subject. Moral naivety, most famously: what journalists do – gain and then betray their subject’s confidence – is “morally indefensible”, as Malcolm puts it in her notorious opening sentence. But the book also takes aim at literary naivety. Journalists are like novelists with their hands tied by reality: they need good characters just as badly but, since they can’t invent them, they must find them “ready-made”, scouted from “a small group of people of a certain rare, exhibitionistic, self-fabulising nature”. The journalist themselves, meanwhile, “is almost pure invention”: “Superman” to the real writer’s “Clark Kent”, an “over-reliable narrator”.In Malcolm’s view, neither journalist nor subject can avoid the moral impasse that is built into the journalistic situation. When the text first appeared, as a two-part article in The New Yorker, its thesis seemed so radical and its irony so pitiless that journalists across the country reacted as if stung.

THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER | Kirkus Reviews

This is a lazy excuse for a book. It purports to explore the questions of the responsibility of the writer to the subject, truthfulness, libel, and freedom of the press. It consists of a scattered set of summaries of the author's interviews with the lawyers and principles in a court case in which a convicted murderer successfully sued the author of his true crime story 'for fraud and breach of contract - as an attempt "to set a new precedent whereby a reporter or author would be legally obligated to disclose his state of mind and attitude toward his subject during the process of writing and research."" The author maintains his "only obligation from the beginning was to the truth" and that the legal precedent set by a decision against him would result in a "grave threat to established journalistic freedoms". In The Journalist and the Murderer Janet Malcolm examines the relationship between the journalist and his subject, through the example of Joe McGinness and Jeffrey MacDonald, the subject of McGinness's best-selling book, Fatal Vision. McGinness was invited into the inner circle of MacDonald's defense team and he spent hours with MacDonald, and he continued to write friendly letters to MacDonald after MacDonald's conviction for the murder of his wife and daughters. When MacDonald read the book, he felt betrayed and sued the author for fraud and breech of contract.

Janet Clara Malcolm (born Jana Klara Wienerová; [1] July 8, 1934 – June 16, 2021) was an American writer, staff journalist at The New Yorker magazine, and collagist who fled antisemitic persecution in Nazi-occupied Prague just before it became impossible to escape. [2] She was the author of Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1981), In the Freud Archives (1984), and The Journalist and the Murderer (1990). Malcolm wrote frequently about psychoanalysis and explored the relationship between journalist and subject. She was known for her prose style and for polarizing criticism of her profession, especially in her most contentious work, The Journalist and the Murderer, which has become a staple of journalism-school curricula.

The Journalist and the Murderer: Malcolm, Janet The Journalist and the Murderer: Malcolm, Janet

Featuring the real-life lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision. As a journalist I've often experienced the condition Janet Malcolm dissects so masterfully here--the way my job--and just the act of writing 'nonfiction' itself--requires me to don a persona with interview subjects that will give me the best chance of getting the information I need for a story, or to shape the events I report on into a narrative that will give satisfaction to my readers. Malcolm isn't talking about breaches of journalistic ethics here, but rather, she examines the simple, unavoidable necessity journalists have to make their stories compelling. Journalists do this by choosing sides, even if they believe themselves to be balanced (or "fair and balanced," as some would say). They tell the story in a way that bolsters their points of view and that appeals to their readers. Just committing the act of writing one word after another commits a writer to a certain set of conclusions. Malcolm examines this process with a greatness of heart that left me with a far greater awareness of the way I've been making these choices throughout my career.

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In August 1989, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco agreed with a lower court in dismissing a libel lawsuit that Masson had filed against Malcolm, The New Yorker and Alfred A. Knopf. [19] Scardino, Albert, The New York Times. "Ethic, Reporters and The New Yorker", March 21. 1989. "Janet Malcolm, a staff writer for The New Yorker, returned her magazine to the center of the long-running debate over ethics in journalism this month ... Her declarations provoked outrage among authors, reporters and editors, who rushed last week to distinguish themselves from the journalists Miss Malcolm was describing." I will say that the president has been clear, and we’ve been clear by our actions that we’re going to recalibrate the relationship,” Psaki said. Tony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said: “While the United States remains invested in its relationship with Saudi Arabia, President Biden has made clear that partnership must reflect US values. To that end, we have made absolutely clear that extraterritorial threats and assaults by Saudi Arabia against activists, dissidents, and journalists must end. They will not be tolerated by the United States.” In Malcolm's book - she explores the 'ethics'/morals of journalism through Jeffrey MacDonald's murder case. MacDonald had taken too much diet pills which then aroused some kind of 'psychosis' in him - eventually leading him to kill his entire family. And then McGinniss (journalist/writer of Fatal Vision) wrote a book about him. MacDonald sued McGinnis afterwards. Malcolm argues in her book the rights/wrongs of that - and what is the responsibility/limits of a journalist.

Peter R de Vries: Dutch crime journalist wounded in - BBC Peter R de Vries: Dutch crime journalist wounded in - BBC

In Esquire, Tom Junod characterized Malcolm as "a self-hater whose work has managed to speak for the self-hatred (not to mention the class issues) of a profession that has designs on being 'one of the professions' but never will be." Junod found her to be devoid of "journalistic sympathy" and observed: "Very few journalists are more animated by malice than Janet Malcolm.” [32] Junod himself, however, has been criticized for a number of journalistic duplicities, including a smirking piece in Esquire which outed the actor Kevin Spacey, [33] as well as a similarly homophobic faux profile of the singer Michael Stipe. [34] Malcolm was born in Prague in 1934, one of two daughters (the other is the author Marie Winn), of Hanna (née Taussig) and Josef Wiener (aka Joseph A. Winn), a psychiatrist. [3] [4] She resided in New York City after her Jewish family emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1939, fleeing Nazi persecution of Jews. [5] Malcolm was educated at the High School of Music and Art, and then at the University of Michigan, [5] where she wrote for the campus newspaper, The Michigan Daily, and the humor magazine, The Gargoyle, later editing The Gargoyle. [5] Career [ edit ]As a journalist myself, it certainly raised questions with me. Malcolm comes to the conclusion that McGinnis' approach was not ethical, and I tend to agree. Despite Macdonald's conviction for a crime that is horrific (albeit one he continues to deny he committed), it seems to me McGinnis' lies were not justified. a b McCollum, Douglas, Columbia Journalism Review, "You Have The Right to Remain Silent", January, February 2003. It's hard to imagine that Malcolm fully believes her starting assertion, or that there aren't ways around it -- by being smart about what she's doing and acting ethically. Writing straight stories also seems like a good approach. Despite being written 30 years ago, in an age before social media, podcasts and (the concept of) "fake news", Janet Malcolm's reflection on journalistic morality and true crime still has resonance and bite. Macdonald had considered McGinnis a friend after he was invited behind the scenes with him and his defence team ahead of the murder trial.