‘But that’s what happened, is no excuse. We don’t care what really happened, and just because it happened doesn’t mean it’s going to make a good story,’ that’s what my very first writing teacher at the Loft told us on the first day of beginning fiction.
‘Some things only happen in real life and bad fiction,’ is a Kurt Vonnegut quote my writer-friend John is fond of saying.
As someone who has recently started exploring the fiction-writing waters, I’ve haven’t had a hard time delineating between real-life and fiction. My readers, mostly friends and family, however, are having a hard time distinguishing between the two. A piece loosely based on something that’s happened is a lot easier for me to write, than it is for people to read. I have to constantly remind my readers that it’s fiction. Somehow, they still don’t get it.
My background as a journalist helps me in the delineation process. I know it’s not true; it’s not fact, because I’m sitting at my computer making it up as I go along. There are no sources that I interviewed, no events to attend, no facts to check.
In the past, though, reporters have had a hard time keeping the fiction out of their facts. I just finished watching the movie Shattered Glass about the former New Republic Associate Editor Stephen Glass. In 1998, a Forbes online reporter discovered that Glass had fabricated a story called “Hack Heaven.” Eventually it was discovered that Glass had fabricated a great many of the stories he had published.
The movie was completely engrossing. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I was stunned by the audacity of Glass, amazed by such artful lying. It made me think of the Jayson Blair brouhaha of last summer and of course brought back memories of the Janet Cooke lectures I listened to in college.
I think it was Conner, my media law and ethics professor who first told me about Janet Cooke. Cooke was a reporter for the Washington Post (working under editor Ben Bradlee who was also editor during the Watergate investigation, and whose autobiography A Good Life is a phenomenal read) who made up a story about a young heroin addict named Jimmy. The story went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. Eventually Cooke was discovered to be a phony and a fake, and the Post had to return the prize.
When I first heard her story I was amazed. I couldn’t believe that someone could do something like that. I naively thought it was an isolated incident.
Then came Glass.
Then came Blair.
And I am sure there are dozens of other cases that I’m just not aware of.
Throughout the whole Blair debacle, and while watching this movie my stomach ached. How could he? How could he? How could he? I thought to myself over and over. How could they?
Recently a reader of my personal Web site, I Will Dare, asked if I was ever going to comment on the Jayson Blair episode. I had refrained for some odd reason, not really sure what I would say.
There aren’t enough hateful epithets that I could hurl at Blair, Cooke, Glass and others of that ilk. There’s no amount of vitriol that could possibly express the rolling in my stomach, the way my heart beat changes, or the rage that sparkles in my eyes when I read about what they have done.
Most people probably think nothing of it. We all tell lies. All of us, even me. But then it’s not our job to tell the truth, to report on events. Thousands upon thousands of people don’t put their trust in us. They don’t trust us to tell them truth. But everyone who read anything written by Blair, Glass, and Cooke, trusted them. These people took trust and abused it. What’s worse, the absolute worst is that they are now earning money from their lies. Blair was paid six figures for his memoir, Glass was paid for a novel based on his time at the New Republic, Cooke was paid for the movie rights to her story.
As I sit here trying to wrap this up, trying to come to some conclusion, I’m stumped. I can just see people asking themselves ‘so what, why does this matter?’
And all I can think is, because it does. To deny the influence of the media and journalism in your life is foolish. To deny their importance, is dangerous. Despite the level of respect that they may garner, journalists play a vital role in the operation of our country. They are there to keep our government and our businesses honest. It’s their job to tell us what’s going on. When those people start telling lies, we have a lot to worry about. Hell, we have a lot to worry about now, what with all of the media being owned by a handful of corporations’but that’s another column for another time.