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Publishers Say 'Fact-Checking Too Costly'
Mr. Ghost writes "Members of the book publishing industry say that profit margins are too small to fact check "non-fiction" books. Instead they rely on the "honesty" of the authors submitting the book. This has come to a head with the revelation from the author of "Million Little Pieces" that he lied about the accounts in his memoirs."
Just bad lawyers for the libel suits.
AI programmers have another job to do.... since machine translation is moving along quite well, why not develop a fact checker based on a similar algorithm, that compiles things from various sources and then presents it to a human to do final checking?
-Palal
Shouldn't the headline read Publishers Admit Wikipedia is More Accurate Than Books?
Hopefully people like opra will at least fact-check stuff before hanging their credibility out to dry.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Standard author contract says that the author warrants that their writing is original, factual, etc... and that the author will pay for as many lawyers that the publisher feels their need should there be legal trouble. So there's not a lot of risk for th publisher, and not a huge amount of incentive to spend a lot of effort fact checking. There's still the risk that the author goes bankrupt, and the publisher is back to paying for their own lawyers still, I suppose.
My publisher does some checking for plagarism, since that has come up a couple of times.
I didn't even have time to fact-check this reply!
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Filing taxes is a big pain, too, so maybe I'll just give that one a miss this year and see how that turns out...
Have fun,
Nathan 'Nato' Uno
http://web.unos.net/
The only people who believed Frey wanted to be fooled: Glory to Dr. Dolan, as they say.
Screw honesty or even decent reporting - to hell with all that! It's too "costly". What happened to the day when it was more important to be right and honest than to sell tons of books/magazines/newspapers?
Disgusting...
My MythTV HowTo
The more people make a big deal of this guy, the more money he makes from publicity. Stop buying his stupid book.
I don't know about yours, but my mother taught me not to believe everything I read / hear / see on TV.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
While I think the publishers of a scientific journal bare some responsibility when it turns out an article was entirely bogus I don't understand why people want to blame the publishers of an Autobiography.
Had the publishers known the book was faked, contrived or otherwise bogus they should have refused publishing it as an autobiography. I see no reason for them to go out of their way to prove, or disprove it though.
People take some things far too seriously.
... there are a legion of Guys With Web Sites to keep them honest!
I can't expect honesty from my nightly news let alone a biographical book.
Before anyone worries about the standards of Oprah's latest gem we should have something in place to hold "news" publicists/broadcasters responsible for their tripe.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I thought it was up to the writer to substantiate facts with proof and have his peers review the book. It seemed the publisher's job was to keep themselves from being sued for libel and that's it. It it so shocking that a book can actually be incorrect?
There's plenty of books contradicting eachother's "facts" and books later proven to be incorrect, so what exactly has changed since A Million Little Pieces? There's a lot more dangerous books than some junkie's fantasy adventure.
So instead, they'll send two guys named Guido to anybody's house that complains, and make em an offer they can't refuse
Who does this "submitter" thing he "is" with all these "quotes," "Bennett Brauer?"
The "Million Little Pieces" incedent is minor as far as I am concerned. The lack of real fact-checking has gotten so bad that there is a whole industry of debunkers and debunker-debunkers. Take Ann Coulter for instance. Her grasp of reality (or at least the difference between truth and fiction) is minimal at best. A whole army of coulter-debunkers have grown up who devote time to debunking her claims (my favorite is The Daily Howler. In turn a whole army of Coulter Defenders has grown up to attack these debunkers.
At first I was annoyed by this phoenomenon, and then bored by it. Initally I assumed that the people who publish Coulter would care that her lies slandered their good name. And then I realized that they didn't care. They were making money off of her and the people both defending and attacking her. And, at the end of the day most people only believe those that say what they want to hear anyway.
While I was initially inclined to see this as bad publishing I now see this as a bigger problem.
Of course it should be up to the author to decide whether his/her book is fiction or nonfiction, and that author should be held accountable for it. The publisher takes the risk of looking bad if they invest in a disreputable author. What's the problem here? Exactly how many people do you expect to hold your hand through life? Next we'll be quibbling over whether the Bible is fiction or non-fiction.
This is a complete shock. Really.
Of all political stripes.
If it's too expensive for a book publisher to do fact-checking research a couple hundred times a year at most, it's gotta be too expensive for the NY Times which has to fill up 200 pages every day of the year.
Especially when TV news viewership and newspaper subscriptions are dropping like a rock taking ad revenues with them.
This sounds simular to an excuse currently being used in political circles to violate the constitution. I guess we just gotta teach our kids that "I don't wanna" is ok for the 2000's. Mod me down.
From TFA
Late Friday afternoon, plaintiff's attorney Marc Bern said he filed a lawsuit against Random House and its Doubleday imprint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan charging that the publishers misrepresented that book as nonfiction. His client, California resident Karen Futernick, alleges in the suit that she purchased "A Million Little Pieces" on that basis but that the defendants "failed to conduct a reasonable investigation or inquiry regarding the truthfulness or accuracy" of the material. Mr. Bern said that he will seek more than $50 million in damages for the plaintiffs. "Nobody can get away with profiting with a product that you represented as something that it is not," says Alan Ripka, another partner in Napoli Bern Ripka LLP, the New York City law firm that filed the suit.
Ayup. $50 Million dollars because she bought a book marked as non-fiction that was actually fictional. If she ever went into the Boston Public Library, we could clear the national deficit just from the Natural Sciences section alone!
People Talking in Movie shows.. people smoking in bed.. people voting republican.. GIVE THEM A BOOT TO THE HEAD!
Fortunate Son was withdrawn from the publisher because A.) The author was utterly unable to provide a single shred of proof for the only new, "bombshell" revelation in the book, i.e. that George W. Bush was once arrested for cocaine possession, and B.) The author turned out to be a liar and convicted felon. He was an ex-con on parole for attempted murder, had pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $34,000 in federal housing funds, none of which he happened to mention to St. Martin's while pitching the book. Plus he was caught making up stories about his background; as a science fiction writer, I especially liked the one about how he was recipient of "the prestigious international Isaac Asimov Foundation Literary Award for Outstanding Biography," which, oddly enough, doesn't exist.)
Michael Bellesiles' Arming America was another demonstrable (although initially more believable and well-crafted) fraud that argued gun ownership in early America was rare. Researchers following up on his work found that some of his source material said the exact opposite of what he claimed. That eventually got Bellesiles fired from his university position, and even had the Bancroft prize committee not only rescind the prize it had awarded him, but ask for the prize money back!
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Oprah publicly lashed out at the liar(author) and the publisher on her show. This is simply a case of CYA. Oprah's production company was approached by mutliple credible people discounting the book's story long before this scandal took place. Her production company has many resources. Considering the volume of sales they do, there is no reason for her production company not to do a little fact checking on their own.
This also must mean they also don't fact check the fiction!
There may very well have been popular works of fiction that may actually have been non-fiction! I bet if Smoking Gun digs a little, they might get something on Stephen King.
What do Americans think of seeking $50m in "damages" for the California resident who bought a copy of the book?
On the other hand, it's a damn good book, and wouldn't have been as good if I thought it was fake. My girlfriend's English professor went to college with him, and said that the guy was definately a tortured soul. When he spent that 2 nights in jail (which he claimed was 5 years in his book), it really tore him up; for him, it was 5 years.
Regardless, this didn't hurt his book sales too badly! It's still on the top 5 sellers list!
As far as publishers fact-checking: Do we really expect these guys to do this? That could take some digging for them, and we all know how publishers can be.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
Oprah ran lies about Hurricane Katrina on her show and she never retracted them. She allowed Mayor Ray Nagin on September 5th claim that "They're murdering people in there (the Superdome)." Louisiana National Guard and State health department officials said no one had been murdered inside the stadium. So what's worse? A book about an addict that was spiced up or a public official using Oprah's airwaves to promote false news to a nation that public policy might have been based off?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
In other words, non-fiction books are a worse source of information than Wikipedia, which is constantly open to peer review (unlike dead tree media, which is unalterable once printed).
So, maybe now people constantly slamming Wikipedia for its lack of "fact checking" will stop?
It's only a matter of time before fact checking becomes a pay-for extra even in science journals.
Man, I wish I could use that excuse to get out of copyright infringement/IP messes. "Sorry, it was too costly to check with every surviving actor and the estates of the dead ones...," "Sorry, it was too costly to check if this CD was in the public domain or not...," etc.
--- Bwah?
I hadn't heard!
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
I will forgo the usual bad joke for this thought:
Someone should pick this up as an opportunity to create a commercial certification such as in MSA, UL, or to a much less and more stupid extent, A+. e.g. Certified to be factual by Sarlon (its made up I hope). With that they get the right to put the big ol' Sarlon stamp on the cover and in the publishers disclaimer.
As with all certifications, whose without are obviously sub-par and not to be trusted.
I am only partially joking.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Well if Ann Coulter can go to press with a book claiming that the NY Times didn't acknowledge the death of Dale Earnhard Jr. and the Bush Whitehouse lets in a Fake News agency to punt easy questions what more can be expected?
I'm not sure why all of this is being debated. Non-fiction doesn't mean SOLID TRUTH. It means that it's not fiction.
Does it matter if a memoir is faked? If it's not doing things like falsely accusing someone of being a child molester, what the fuck does it really matter?
Boo hoo a lot of housewives were duped.
I'm sure someone will mod this down as a troll, but besides some fucked up sense of security, what was harmed?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
just take Gulliver's Travels, for example. It was originally published as Non-fiction travel literature. Come on, did you really think publishers really planned on going to see if 6inch Liliputian people and horse-people Houyhnhnms really existed? No, Swift's claims were so unbelievable people probably thought they had to be believable. Not to say that anyone bought his stories while they were published as non-fiction, but it doesn't come as much of a surprise that publishers wouldn't check facts.
Maybe book publishers are only into making good-enough books just as Microsoft has become incredibly rich making good-enough software. Both are in the business of making one work that is distributed for a marginal cost.
The problem is that making an OS is just a little bit more work than making a book and checking all the enclosed facts. In this case, checking a few facts in a book gives you a lot more bang for the buck than fixing all the bugs in a several million lines of code OS.
In short, I don't buy it. If you're releasing a book that you're going to represent as non-fiction, you have a duty(maybe it's your main duty) to ensure the facts are straight. If you make an encyclopedia I'll give you some leeway but anything else deserves to be investigated to the hilt.
Publishers, suck it up! If you're not profitable it's because nobody wants to read your books, fiction or non.
I find it quite irritating that some books are out to trick their readers, and there are many I'd prefer had never been written simply because it means I spend more time having to argue with and correct people on certain topics if they've been taking rubbish sources seriously. But the thought of non-fiction books having to be factually correct seems quite far-fetched. If publishers and authors could be sued for providing factually wrong books in a non-fiction category, then categories such as "New age" would be illegal, simply because authors who publish in them tend to be out to swindle their readers in one way or another by definition, and the publisher's probably in it for the sales. (Okay, I see New Age as fiction, but many book shops, publishers and people don't.)
Some of the best satire can come from effectively lying to an audience, and I don't see how you could cleanly distinguish it. Peter Jackson is just an example of someone who's done this, having faked an historical documentory (see Forgotten Silver) and lied about its origins to get it on TV. He had a lot of gullible people thinking they were seeing actual history, including the TV network, before he revealed it was all made up. What's the difference? Could he have been sued by the network? Possibly, but he took that chance and he wasn't, and now Forgotten Silver is considered a work of art.
As sad as I think it is that there are some really crappy books out there, and people who believe them, I'm not sure how rules could be made to fairly place responsibility on a publisher. Personally I think that fact checking should come from peers after publication, and it should be the responsibility of the reader to check if the facts have been checked. Hopefully anything that's actually important enough and relied on by enough people will have its facts checked, resulting in either confirmation, or a very embarassed author and publisher. There are always reputations to go on. In the case the article speaks of, the publisher is hopefully now being made to look more than a little stupid, and I'd like to think that Oprah's Book Club reputation is probably suffering a bit more than it was previously if its followers ever cared about this sort of thing. I've never followed her book club myself, but that's for good reason.
No one knows the pain of fact checking being too costly as those wrongly convicted of crimes.
7h3$3 4r3n'7 7h3 Ðr01Ð$ ¥0 4r3 £00|{1n9 f0r. M0v3 4£0n9. --OB1
Well, oddly enough, "The Truth About Hillary", a book that describes Hillary Clinton as a lesbian, has not been pulled off of shelves. Neither has that Swift Boat Veterans book about Kerry. It seems that certain lies are more bothersome to certain people.
If you want to read a good book by a liar and a convicted felon, I hear G. Gordon Liddy has a new one coming.
(a) That it's disgusting that Oprah ran lies on her show; and
(b) That the US government would be dumb enough to base policy on what they saw on Oprah
Once, houses like MacMillan, Knopf, and others could be trusted. Only rarely was their a problem with quality. Nowadays, it's difficult to know which house owns what; the publishers are actually little LLCs owned by bigger houses to reduce liability should something nasty happen. The lawyers have pushed liability out past the point where the public is protected, only the publisher. Indemnification is a shell game now. ./
It's also quantity game. Quality is how much you can pimp your book at ABA, or find clever marketing tricks to move your product. The product is a brand-- the author or perhaps a genre. The political diatribe is especially rife with lies and hubris.... with a pseudo-leather jacket on.
In the computer trade press Microsoft Press and Cisco Press killed the little (if sometimes profitable) computer book publishers.... with the rare O'R book that's somewhat decent. Books in the computer trades are now collaborative books sold on the hoof. The really great tomes rarely emerge these days because publishers wouldn't know how to sell them, or to whom. They keep their losses cut to the bone. Authors have little financial incentive.... the shelf life of a product-specific title is the same as hamburger.
This said from the author/co-author of ten highly fact-checked books. In their day, they made only a little money because quality |= profits. Publishers learned that a title, TOC, and timing made all the difference. Content? They're indemnified. It's all spin after that. Look at how Washington DC has learned that lesson.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Some books, well, you really have to wonder if they're actually intended to be non-fiction in the first place. Biographies - especially unauthorized ones - are sometimes pretty unbelievable. And sometimes you just have to wonder what the hell the editors (yes, plural) were thinking. At some point in time, you'd expect that common sense would kick in and they'd say "Oh come on, that can't be right..."
But no. Time after time, you see all manner of media go through at least three levels of possible sanity checking and bullshit filter, and still somehow the real stinkers get through.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Over the last 10-15 years there's been a huge increase in the numbers of self-help books being published. Most of them are "chicken soup for the soul" type of stuff, and I don't have a problem with that.
What I do have a problem with is books that push a controversial viewpoint about (say) medicine. The best example is Kevin Trudeau and his book Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About.
Honestly, there is really nothing stopping me writing a book claiming that "prescription medicine is CAUSING DISEASE!!!" and selling thousands of copies - the publicity is self-generated because of the controversy, and I believe it's the sort of information that a lot of people want to hear.
I could even put the letters "MD, PhD" after my name. Sure, critics will point out that these degrees are from non-accredited universities, but that won't stop sales of the book one bit. In the end I make megabucks while spreading false information.
I've now formed the opinion that you should simply not read non-fiction books unless you really know what you're doing. You can't trust 'em.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Hmmmm, when we go from the writer's description to something "Mr. Bern said", we suddenly have "plaintiffs". Plural. This tells me the suit might involve more then the one lottery contestant the WSJ writer alluded to. Easy enough to google for a copy of the suit.
Seems the suit is actually a class action attempting to represent several million purchasers. There is plenty wrong with class-action lawsuits, and, yes, mainly the lawyers will win, yada, yada. Still, it's not quite the 'frivolous' action the WSJ author is attempting to paint. Fifty million between several million buyers does not seem unreasonable.
Interesting that the WSJ writer didn't mention that.
Books.
TV.
Politicians.
Everyone.
People lie, get over it.
here's a cheap, easy solution.
make another category of book...
fiction
non-fiction
and partial-fiction
or some other catchy title.
simple, non consumer-deceptive solution. this category simply means that facts weren't checked.
So the guy lied. Who cares? He writes this book and suddenly Oprah swoops in and this guy is assured a huge paycheck. And she wonders why he didn't come forward and tell everyone it was sort of made up? Could it be the difference between making money and making nothing?
I'd read TFA but it's just too costly.
I'm one of the few people who believe that the book in its current form is a dead medium in the long run. The books I am currently working on will be completely free in e-book format in exchange for creating a market for my services. There is no margin in this case, pure promotional and marketing value.
In the long haul, even if books continue to have staying power, the Internet is all you need to fact check. Book publishing costs are way down but distribution and marketing costs are way up. If an author prints false material, the market will verify it quick enough, and the author will be finished. This is a much better process than relying on expensive fact checkers, as there are millions of people online willing to find people guilty of lying and manipulating.
Part of my drive in my "no copyright" movement is to find replacements to the various distribution cartels, which include the beloved RIAA, MPAA and the author's unions. These groups are fully responsible for the high cost to enter the market because of their power over copyright. The power of writing or creating is either one of ego-payment (gaining notoriety or fame) or one of creating a value for one's face time. I don't believe that writing a book should offer any more (just as I don't see value in making a CD anymore either).
If you're an author who writes non-fiction, you already know there are profitable ways to promote your ideas without having to kowtow to the publishers. There are already numerous profitable authors who have found ways to make a decent living without the need for Amazon or Borders.
In the end, fact checking is completely a wasted task. The free market has restrictions on how much a consumer is willing to accept in shoddy service, and a book full of lies is no different. We can thank the millions of decisions that anonymous consumers make in realizing this new change in the structure of selling creation -- putting value on truth.
"the profit-margins in publishing don't allow for hiring fact-checkers"
/ customers/bmcorp/pdf/Interim_Report_2005_.pdf
Lies! For those that didn't read TFA, Random House is owned by Bertelsmann AG. In 2005, the Random House division posted (EBIT) Earnings Before Interest and Taxes of 48 million Euros on revenues of 818 million Euros. So about USD$58 million in profit. http://www.bertelsmann.de/bertelsmann_corp/wms41/
Why, pray tell, did you happen to choose these particular examples? I'd almost suspect that you have a political axe to grind...especially since in your list of cases of "recent vintage" you left off several more compelling, more current, and more significant cases.
--MarkusQ
P.S. And before you start drawing unfounded conclusions about my politics, I happen to be a fiscally conservative registered Republican, who happens to hold my side to a higher standard than the "opposition". Where I was brought up, cheating to win meant you had lost, no matter what the scoreboard said.
Mark Twain was a writer of impeccable character who would be proud that we take our stories so seriously these days.
I hear he too might be coming out with an autobiography.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385507755/104-33 57512-8407954?v=glance&n=283155
They still want to rake in the big bucks. Rather than dumping this liar they'll just put a bandaid on it and keep raking it in.
Amazon.com News from Doubleday & Anchor Books The controversy over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces has caused serious concern at Doubleday and Anchor Books. Recent interpretations of our previous statement notwithstanding, it is not the policy or stance of this company that it doesn't matter whether a book sold as nonfiction is true. A nonfiction book should adhere to the facts as the author knows them. It is, however, Doubleday and Anchor's policy to stand with our authors when accusations are initially leveled against their work, and we continue to believe this is right and proper. A publisher's relationship with an author is based to an extent on trust. Mr. Frey's repeated representations of the book's accuracy, throughout publication and promotion, assured us that everything in it was true to his recollections. When the Smoking Gun report appeared, our first response, given that we were still learning the facts of the matter, was to support our author. Since then, we have questioned him about the allegations and have sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished. We bear a responsibility for what we publish, and apologize to the reading public for any unintentional confusion surrounding the publication of A Million Little Pieces. We are immediately taking the following actions: # We are issuing a publisher's note to be included in all future printings of the book. # James Frey is writing an author's note that will appear in all future printings of the book. # The jacket for all future editions will carry the line "With new notes from the publisher and from the author."
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Real life couldn't produce such crap.
John Nolan exposed this "self-aggrandizing, simple-minded, poorly observed, repetitious, maudlin drivel" in his July 2003 review A Million Pieces of Shit.
An excerpt:
"I step forward and I hug her. There is emotion in the hug, and there is respect and a form of love. Emotion that comes from honesty, respect that comes from challenge, and the form of love that exists between people whose minds have touched, whose souls have touched. Our minds touched. Our hearts touched. Our souls touched."
You be the judge.
John Nolan was also one of the first (the first?) to publicly call Frey a liar in a reviewreview of Freys next (even worse book).
Be heard || Be herd
As the author of several computer-related books, I'd like to point out that the computer book publishing industry does a great job of fact checking, despite the high cost. For instance, my most recent book, on Linux, actually contains *no* factual errors whatsoever. On the other hand, I must confess that my book is really about MS Windows, not Linux. Fortunately, few readers seem to have noticed so far.
And perhaps even if it is? Read Navahoax: a story about a very similar situation as this one, where a writer made up supposedly nonfiction autobiographical accounts and was published (the publishers here also say we don't fact check such stories). The stories in this case do deal with child molestation, among other things, and while the stories are not accusations per se, one wonders about the implications of publishing material like this under false pretenses. I tend to agree that it doesn't make that much difference, since one can perhaps get greater truths from fictional works, and if the phony "memoirs" label makes it easier for some people to accept those truths, what's the harm? On the other hand, I would think a publisher should make it their business to know whether this was really a memoir or is a fictional memoir, since it is their decision to market the book a certain way. Of course, even in truthful autobiographies there will be exaggeration and writer's license to interpret things in various ways; I'm not sure there's always an easy line to draw between truth and fiction.
but she is still the Anti-Christ, correct?
Mmmm...$15 for 400 pieces of paper, those are razor thin margins to be sure. Last I checked a ream of paper was $2.99 and laser toner is about a penny a page. And that's if I do it. Maybe they should just put the books online for free and let us bear the costs of printing? It would certainly be cheaper.
I happen to be in college and at one point I took a lovely class called English 100 or 'Expository Writing'. In talking about reliable sources for information, my teacher (who has a reputation as a teacher who knows what she's talking about) said that biographies, and all that 'popular non-fiction' are not a reliable source. When asked about using Wikipedia as a source tho, she replied that yeah, in general it was okay, becuase that sort of thing tends to be peer reveiwed into accuracy.
I think this article here exemplifies this well.
Since when is "too-costly" an excuse to do what is necessary? This is non-fiction. If you're not going to fact check, don't bother publishing it at all, because for all you know, that book about beavers might say "Beavers explosively attack people with their menacing teeth. They are the most deadly animals alive."
Derive Politics
Anybody who thinks that a published book or newspaper is any more reliable than Wikipedia must be blind.
You must think for yourself; nothing you read can be taken as fact or on authority, no matter who wrote it. Facts only emerge after you correlate statements and find multiple independent sources to verify something.
It was actually two hours, not two nights. He was in for a few hours until a friend came to bail him out.
At least get the correction right.
Lies sell.
Until they don't, expect publishers to keep printing them.*
* This sentence (and this footnote) is not counted in the "Two words" subject claim.
To use multiple sources.
While it's true that you shouldn't use wikipedia as an only source, you shouldn't use ANYTHING as an only source, and wikipedia is perfectly legitimate for a beginning point for some information.
Although this seems off topic, it's really not; the main gripe that most people have behind wikipedia is that anyone can edit it and there's no fact checking; on the other hand, publishers have just admitted that they don't do fact checking either, in the name of profit. Sure, a professional author is probably a lot less likely to make a mistake, but then again, they're human, and mistakes do get made. And this is leaving out the matter of intentional information spoofing, which obviously plagues all sorts of media.
So there you have it. Published material isn't safe either.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
I was citing Coulter to bring this into the publishing realm. But you are right. Her Dale Earnhardt whininess has not gotten anyone killed and that makes Bush's Lies (or the lies fed to him) much much worse.
I still believe that he actually believed they were there. Whether Donald Rumsfeld and Cheney did I am not sure but I am reasonably convinced that he did believe it. In either case the falsehood still holds though, and people are still dying.
I read both "A Million Pieces.." and "My Friend Leonard", and even while holding my cynicism in check, found too much that just didn't pass the sniff test. For the publisher to not bother checking the more glaringly "off" sections, was at best a stupendous display of poor judgement and incompetence. Furthermore, keep in mind that Frey's agent shopped the book around to different publishers in some cases as "Fiction" and in others as "Memoir".
The politics of your examples aside (others have pointed this out, and they are quite right), these are different kinds of works. The first is a sort of pseudo-journalism and the second pretends to be a piece of scholarship. The first actually did get published by a smaller press and the author was not sued (probably because the allegations were not far off the mark). The second got the guy into trouble and rightly so -- the credibility of academic writing and research in general depends upon peer review rooting out such problems, but academic publishers usually do not go to press either without reasonable fact-checking work. But with memoirs, autobiographies, and other literary works, standards are different -- a certain amount of artistic license is de riguer; who decides when it is too much?
how else could this man make a living?
If you think
"I'm glad she tore into him; he deserved that. Still, why wasn't that her first reaction? "
Why does anyone care about what Oprah does or thinks? I'm fascinated why anyone considers her more compelling or important than say, Madonna, Prince Charles, or Winnie the Pooh?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Publishers should stamp, in very tiny letters, "Based on a true story" on the last page of every book they publish. Come to think of it, many newspapers should probably do this too. Honestly though, our society is in no way built on a foundation of personal integrity. I'm not exactly sure why people are so upset - they should be used to being lied to by now. I challenge any of the people who were angered by the lies in James Frey's book to go a whole day without lying to themselves or to someone else.
Ha! now all the nay sayers can just button their lips this proves once and for that /. is bleeding edge, way ahead of the curve, left the publishing industry in the dust ages a go! :)
The day I watched the CBS news at noon declare me DEAD. Somehow I just kinda knew the report was false!
The power of writing or creating is either one of ego-payment (gaining notoriety or fame) or one of creating a value for one's face time.
I'm an introvert, you insensitive clod!
Slashdot Editors Say 'Dupe-Checking Too Costly'
"Too costly to fact-check" is such bullshit.
They're called interns. Good editors - like the one who used me at MacAdam/Cage Publishing - have the interns fact-check their galleys (or Advanced Review Copies), and then have a copy-editor do a little bit of the same.
It is not at all hard to fact check. As long as the editors actually utilize their cheap labor for the good of the publisher instead of using them as a pet for their own personal benefit. It's just plain lazy.
People watching Ophra crying foul for buying into reading or publishing company making money off people's readings suggested by Ophra...
Am I hearing this right? Publishers requiring non-fiction authors to produce some reference and accurate account of events noted with date find so freaking costly and hard to put in a 20 bucks paper back of some crap shooter's shady life story?
Oh wait, I forgot. Those are the same kind of publishers which prints out biology and history books in our school. Yeah.. whatever makes money.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
More evidence to support my claim that the publisher considers their butt to be pretty well covered.
When did you (or indeed anyone else) determine that there was a direct correlation between what women say they want, what they think they want (you know, deep down inside), and what they actually end up doing?
You have to realize: women and men don't speak the same language. Maybe we speak English, Spanish, German, Russian or what have you, but it dosen't matter where you are, all women speak Womanese. It's not that they're not being honest with you, it's that you're just not listening to what they're saying. When you ask for a number, and they ask for yours instead "because they don't have a phone", it means "Oh goody, another number to put in my showcase of losers so I can show the grandkids how hot grandma once was".
When they say "We need to talk" it means "I need to complain" When they say "Maybe", they mean "No." When they say "We were both wrong", they naturally mean "You were wrong, and if I have anything to do with you in ten years, I'm going to wave it in your face every chance I get!"
When they say "I like nice guys", it really means, "I want to go screw a biker!", and when they say "I don't want to date you because that would mess up our friendship" they really mean "You're nice, but you're a poor, ugly wuss and I'd rather talk to you about the bikers that will be gangbanging me later tonight."
The single biggest one though, and it's clearly the one you missed out on, when they say "Honesty is inportant to me!" they mean "Tell me only what I want to hear; I don't care if you've been with a three hundred women, I like you anyways (but I might not like you so much if you told me) just don't hurt my feelings."
This asshole's mistake wasn't only in not telling the truth, but it was not telling the truth to a vast audience, and misrepresenting reality on such a wide scale. If you're having an orgy on a lighted billboard that's surrounded by a million onlookers, it only stands to reason that you're going to get busted for it eventually. He and his publisher made their millions, and Oprah fans nationwide want to kick him in the nuts. I guess it all balances out.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
My wife is in her second year of law school. For credits, she checks sources of articles selected for publication in her schoool's law journal. You know how much she gets paid for this miserable work? Nothin!
It seems to me publishers could develop working relationships with colleges pretty easily to perform this "costly" work. There are sure to be plenty of bright folks trying to break in to publishing by doing something more than bringing the editors coffee.
News: Customers say "Crappy inaccurate books too costly"
People need to go back to the 3rd grade and learn the difference between fiction and non-fiction again.
---Joe Ego
I have always been a bigger fan of the opinions expressed by anonymous cowards.
I'm just curious how this is different from advertisments. Do publishers (such as TV and newspapers) have to verify the authenticity of an ad they published, especially the classified ads? I mean all the publisher's job is suppose to do, is publish it the way the author wants it. If Store A advertises Item B for Cost C on my local newspaper and they don't honor the price, is it my local newspaper publisher's fault? No.
I don't see why this responsibility is pushed onto the publisher.
Another interesting example regarding another post modded "funny" is the tax. If I take my taxes and let H&R block do them for me and submit it. Is it their fault that I somehow falsified some information? Come on guys. Responsibility has always been the creator's job to tell the truth, not some 3rd party who is involved, unless that was what they were hired to do, such as ESRB and MPAA ratings.
HD Trailers
Some articles not actually news for nerds or stuff that matters.
Have you seen what's being classified as non-fiction? I wish we can sue the garbage that's passed as non-fiction from both extremes. I'm sure the right-wing can spout stuff about Michael Moore's books, and Ann Coulter? Rush Limbaugh? John Gibson's War on Christmas??? Half lies (or half truths, it's the same thing!) to straight up lies. It's all fiction. Check out http://www.mediamatters.org/ and search for ann coulter or rush.
Richard Dawkins, the well-known Oxford biologist, has been pushing for this lately. His two-hour series on Channel 4 in Britain, investigates religion the way 60 Minutes investigates scams. Part I, "The God Delusion", includes a visit to a US megachurch in which the interviewer asks the preacher some tough questions. He also visits Lourdes, and asks questions about the reported miracle cure rate and the types of miracles recorded. It's consumer activism applied to religion.
(The audio of the show is available on the site above, and plays fine. The video is available on BitTorrent but seems to have some formatting problems.)
When asked to substantiate his claim that he "didn't have time to check [his] reply" the Slashdot poster known only as 'ewg' said, "Well, it's kind of like not being able to afford to", and quietly retired from public life, saying only that he (or she, or it) "Needed to spend more time on the talk show circuit".
When and if contacted for comment, Oprah Winfrey -- by her own account an "American TV presenter", whatever that may be, and who cares, and not me -- said she could neither confirm nor deny anything these days, that she preferred it that way, and that she read somewhere that 90% of facts may or may not be something-or-other, but we should love them JUST THE SAME.
With that said... since the majority of Americans do not think critically... its a sad state that publishers don't fact check.
A friend of mine had a story published recently in the New Yorker -- a *fictional* story, about a street family sniffing glue (among other things) in Nairobi, Kenya. They ran into problems with it for awhile during the editing process because it was difficult for them to verify that the slang, the setting, the food, everything -- was valid and realistic. Was the brandname of glue actually available in Nairobi? Etc.. He would find them contacts who turned out to be basically unreachable, etc. etc..
True, this is *fiction* -- but the quality of that kind of story depends partly on its realism, so they needed to check.
I was surprised to hear about the difficulty of the process, but pleased as well that they do put the time into these details. (Now if only their taste in fiction always matched up better with mine...)
Relying on an author's honesty is like relying on a Politician's Honesty.
This just proves my point about the bible! =p
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Take Ann Coulter for instance. Her grasp of reality (or at least the difference between truth and fiction) is minimal at best.
I doubt that. I put Ann Coulter in the same bin as professional wrestlers. I have no doubt that Ms. Coulter is indeed a neoconservative (social conservative, fiscal liberal), but when she gets on TV and makes outrageous claims to tick some people off and gratify others, she is being an actor and an entertainer. The majority of what she says is extreme hyperbole. She can make a career off of exaggeration, and is doing exactly that.
Michael Moore does the same thing (though he tends to stick more to specifically attacking Bush and friends than Coulter, who has a habit of attacking this vast and twisted monster that she's built called "the liberal"). He's making a good living doing what he's doing.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Wish I lived in San Francisco.
Would you lie about yourself in an autobiography if it guaranteed better sales? I bet 95% of people would do exactly as this author did. The publisher undoubtedly read the story...how long does it take to check the facts on the 5 major points in a book? If you aren't profiting enough to do so, don't publish any nonfiction books. Let those willing to spend the time on research have access to a greater variety of writing.
"If dying were anything special, they wouldn't let everyone do it."
So basically what you're telling us is, when it comes to fact-checking, publishers are just as lazy as slashdot editors.
-David
Turning him into a potato...
I'll say Ken Mehlman is a complete embarassment on MtP. He does indeed blatantly repeat mantras (some true and some false) over and over in place of actual responses.
But before you rake Russert over the coals too much, he's still doing a much better job than most interviewers. Really, it's his general level of excellence that damn him most here.
I have noticed Ken Mehlman has been on MtP less often lately, and I hope it stays that way. It is disappointing to see a show that is normally known for actual journalism turn into an organ for the GOP when Mehlman makes an appearance.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Mmm... are we bitter today?
Don't trust any concentration of power.
What if your mother was a television? Mine wasn't, but I look around at some people and think that might just have been the case...
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Oh, MAN, women? WHORES! WHORES I TELL YOU!
*sobs quietly in the corner, blissfully unaware that misogyny and extreme bitterness might have something to do with the fact he's never touched a girl, as opposed to, you know, all girls being WHORES*
You forgot to mention the ladder theory in your fit of nerd rage.
Have you perhaps thought that your intense bitterness and outright misogyny might have more to do with you never touching a girl than 'bikers' or 'all women being whores'?
Dear reading people of America,
We ask that you ignore our statement yesterday about "fact-checking [being] too costly" to do. As many have pointed out, it isn't expensive or hard at all to check your facts. In today's world there are many electronic solutions to these problems.
Once again, we apologize for misleading you, fact-checking is fairly cheap.
Yours Always,
Publishers Of America
(Not Affiliated With American Publishers)
Get your Unix fortune now!
A story on slashdot about publishers not checking facts? The only difference is that at least the slashdot admins admit to it in the FAQ (which from experience, precious few people bother to read)...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
so what we have .. is that in the for profit model(capitalism) .. there are insufficient resources to provide for truth .. honesty .. and facts ..
.. who would have guessed that something would and WILL get sacrificed .. when and as long as there is a bottom line to be meet ..
gee
Carlos Castaneda that is, who got a PhD from Berkley
for a work(teachings of Don Juan) most now think is fictious?
He's never had a chance to touch a girl because they're all out being gangbanged by bikers.
an intern? As an IT Manager for a regional and city magazine, I can attest that if my hundred-thousand dollar, monthly magazine can find the resources to fact check over 100 pages of editorial content(the magazine is usually about 250 pages), then a multi-million dollar publisher can find the resources to fact check their 300 paged manuscripts. I sincerely hope that no one truly believes this bullshit. It's a cop out and a lie.
I suspect that NOT fact-checking non-fiction books will, over time, be even more costly.
French. With ladies, you want to be speaking French, not Russian or Japanese.
Damn, that's it, I'm off to buy a motorcycle and get a tattoo!
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
You have a very cynical view of the world. Women are just like you: They'd rather avoid a confrontation and hurt feelings than be brutally honest. What you call womaneese I call the univeral language of a polite letdown. Trust me, they are doing you a favor by not crushing you, or even worse, leading you on.
They want what you want as well: Excitement, passion, and someone they can respect. Would you want a woman who is affraid to tell you what they think? Would you want a woman who thinks sex is somthing incredibly important, and that they would never suggest it because doing so might offend you? Would you want a woman who has no self identity?
When you see a woman dating an asshole it's usually because they want a middle ground and haven't found it. It's possible they don't even know what they are looking for. It's your job to take a chance. Put the hand on the shoulder. Tell a few jokes. Offer to help her with somthing midly sexual, and see if she takes you up on it (You're going to change? Need a hand?) Take a chance!
The best thing you can do is try to act like an "asshole" because you'll realize that it doesn't work.
Are there big differences between men and women? Sure.
But you and me baby aint nothing but mammals.
So no different than slashdot posts then.
you idiot.
http://www.dalejr.com/
How did you get a +5 instead of getting your Internal Combustion GeekCard revoked?
The latest Slashdot meme.
... Stop watching Oprah. When you find a woman you like, learn what SHE wants. Unless you're dating Oprah, why the frak should you care what Oprah wants in a man? Know yourself. Learn what truths you want from other people and what ugly truths about yourself you don't want to hear from other people. When you've learned this about yourself, you'll have a deeper understanding of what other people want.
As one of the few men among my group of friends who has a successful home life, it has become very apparent to me what's wrong with men. While they sit there bitching and moaning about not knowing what women want, they really don't know what the hell they want. They see women wanting their vanities fed, but are blind to the fact that they want their own vanities fed.
It's not just publishers who think fact checking is too costly. Most people are like that when it comes to themselves. Your post is proof of that. I've never met a single person in life, save for infants and toddlers, who didn't live some lie to some degree. The ability to see this about yourself is what seperates the boys from the men every time, all the time. Very easy to see it in others, but very difficult to see it in yourself.
You ever think of writing a book about women and your vast experience with them? Nonfiction of course.
E-Books are fine for small works not exceeding a coupleof hundred pages
But a book can be randomily accessed needs only amberent light to operate [no dead batterys]
and has [if printed on acid free paper] a impressive archival life.
best of all , it's easier to read
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
Not a biography. How people mix up the two is beyond me.
Why is he writing a biography, at such a young age? What has he accomplished in his life that is worthy of a biography ? Why are so many people buying his book ? Who cares about some washed-out near-do-well, druggy, Hollywood type who's only claim to fame is producing an absolutely dreary 'comedy' with crappy actors.
When I was a lad, biographies were about acheivers, people like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Florence Nightingale, and Millicent Fawcett.
Nowadays we are plagued with biographies and even supposed autobiographies of Paris Hilton {suppresed snigger] and Eddie McGee [who ? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_McGee]
Man, Judith Miller writes in a newspaper and has been proven to be wrong on numerous accounts in whole WMD saga, and this by the officials sent there to find the fucking WMDs. And she still won't admit it. She is part of the whole fucking media problem, i.e. that lying is ok and you can get away with it as long as you have friends in high places.
Leaving aside the annoying "socialist" claptrap, you mention being annoyed because a professor 1) required you to buy their own text; and then 2) didn't use the text.
I find it hard to believe that both of these things happened in the same course. Why would an instructor ignore a text they wrote themselves?
At any rate, professors ignoring texts is too common at the univ. where I teach. This is a direct and predictable result of the administration's policies: instructors can no longer pick whatever textbook they like. The school has standardized that choice for us. Sometimes there is only one "choice." Hurray for economies of scale! (A dogmatic zealot might scream at the "capitalist" corruption of academic freedom here... but that would simply be an annoying simplification likely to elicit cries of "socialist" from someone equally knee-jerked.)
The most serious issue in the classroom is the ridiculously high price of college textbooks. An interesting issue, but not directly related to the discussion of fact-checking or accuracy. Other than the fact that when you pay such a high price for something, you want it to be perfect.
In my view, though, it's fair for publishers to insist that the author carry the burden of fact-checking; Particularly for textbooks, that's where the expertise lies: with the author. If the books are error-ridden, then instructors (or administrators) won't continue using them. Thus the publisher has an incentive to work with reliable authors who error-check.
"She was born to an unmarried coal miner and housemaid and went from that to being a media mogul and controlling top selling book lists"
So you admire her because she's rich and has convinced weak minded people to take her seriously?
Dude, the fact that you think oprah is "nice" or "cares about people" means you've bought into a carefully controlled media face that she puts on to fool people as gullible as you.
Of the original list provided, I think Winnie the Pooh is more real than the public face she presents, I think Madonna is less arrogant, and Price Charles has done more to help humanity.
Oprah. A fat cow with a lot of money who leads idiots around. You deserve her.
Some things cannot be fact-checked in any worthwhile way. Their power to move us is precisely that they are an "imaginative re-creation" of something that happened, and by this they show us a greater spiritual or emotional truth than the bald facts baldly stated. On the basis of literal, scientific truth, I'm afraid that any publisher's fact-checker would be duty-bound to reject the US Constitution and demand cuts or rewriting of 90 per cent of the New Testament, including the retitling of the Letters of St Paul to "Letters by an Unknown Author". The miracle of the feeding of the 5000, for example, cannot literally be true, but to its original listeners the story would have contained some very powerful truths.
I'm not sure which is the more nauseating. That the Opera crew (and sundry attorneys and greed-crazed readers) should have failed to notice that "A Million Little Pieces" could not possibly be true in any literal way; or that having had this pointed out to them, they should blame others for their own stupidity then seek to profit from it.
I doubt we'll hear Oprah calling up an archbishop and demanding the withdrawal of the New Testament any time soon. Maybe, shock horror, the world of 2000 years ago had a much more sophisticated understanding of truth and fiction that we do today.
FWIW, I didn't think much of "A Million Little Pieces". It fails to engage. And, yes, publishers are mostly a two-faced, puffed-up crowd, prattling about literature while paying freelance editors and proofreaders not much more than burger-flipping rates then blaming them for foobars that a Harvard professor might easily have missed.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Is Internet, and most specifically Wikipedia, becoming more like
Anyway, I believe "Mostly Harmless" is in both entries for Earth...
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
H. L. Mencken
yeah.. go ahead and mod this down, I just couldn't resist.
Would you shut up about Ann Coulter already? Nobody gives a fuck that you've got a crush on her, and nobody cares about her, either.
And Dale Earnhard Jr.'s not the one that's dead, moron. His father is.
Nobody D I E D when Clinton lied.
I dont understand the giant kerfluffle that has erupted over A Million Little Pieces. It's a memoir, not an autobiography. The accuracy standards for the former have traditionally been FAR, FAR less rigorous than the latter. An Autobiography is typically held to journalistic fact checking standards, as it is meant to be a historical work. A memoir is typically just some old guy sitting around telling stories about what a stud he was back in the good old days. If you'd like to see or read about more memoirs commonly accepted as largely bullshit, please look for Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, Jennifer Lauck's Blackbird, and Vivian Gornick's Fierce Attachments. Here's a much more serious issue of fabrication: Chuck Barris' completely fabricated autobiography, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was allowed to stand with only minor grumbles. Hell, they even made a movie out of it. Here's how *that* boiled down, in a nutshell: "Chuck barris claims to be a government agent" "Hey, he really wasnt a government agent was he?" "No, I dont think so. He is crazy though." "Hey, a crazy guy who thinks he's a government agent? I smell money!" IMO, this book should never have been published with the word "autobiography" in the title. But hey, there's always money to be made. This is nothing new.
This space for rent.
Ahh yes, what matters is that nonfiction contain a certain measure of truthiness. The work should be truthy, not facty. Welcome to a world where spin has overtaken factual reality in book publishing, where what is said by Dr. Phil, Oprah Winfrey or on cable news has more substance than direct experience itself. Truthiness! Share and Enjoy!
profit margins are too small to fact check "non-fiction" books
But they can afford to fact check the fiction ones?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Ken Lay needs to be in an Orange Prison uniform picking up litter on the capital commons and on Wall Street.
Let his contemporaries see him, and his former employees spit on him.
When he freezes employee sales of stock, and sells his own, he knows what is going on and is screwing his employees.
Oprah did not hire this guy to write the book. She just read it. I expect less from a biography about a nobody then I do from a text book.
I expect more and get less from the NY Times.
No, it's the Isaac Asimov Second Foundation Literary Award for Outstanding Biography that doesn't exist. (Wink wink, nudge nudge.)
I thought all memoirs were ficition or atleast highly biased toward the author and/or subjects life to make the entire piece just a PR book for the future. I mean come on 20-50 years ago this book would get published and most people wouldn't care the only ones that may have bought it are libraries and such. Add 5-10 years and your little Johny is having to do a report on this person, well his memoirs were most likely all any one could find on said person. That there were any factual errors may have come out years after the book was published or the auther is dead. I'd never heard of this book before my morning radio DJ was saying something about it. I could then only laugh that "any one" trusts a memoir as "factual" anyway. ;)
I kinda of take the entire concept of "memoirs" as just bragging and PR for the future anyway.
Maybe there is more truth to those books.
That or Kerry and the Clintons can not afford lawyers.
grrr... s/show collection/shoe collection/
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
When did the Daily Show get an interview with Bush!?!!??
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
I've thought about it, but it'd be a pretty boring book.
Title 1, Chapter 1:
Women are pretty much like men plus boobs and minus dongs.
The End.
"That's the essential difference between a free market and a monopoly. In a free market, competition will set the price near the cost of producing the book."
In all actuality, this is NOT a monopoly situation, it a case of free market economics interfacing with copyright law. A teacher has to choose a single book, which is protected under copyright, once that is chosen, there are no alternatives. This might result in a textbook having a higher cost than anticipated, but I doubt it. The professor, however, has no incentive to choose the lowest cost book, but the one that conveys the information she or he desires best (or, if you're a cynic, the one that re-imburseses him best), but in any case, there are plenty of options available, all clammoring, in a free market, for the right to be represented in that classroom.
Since I work in academia, let me state this for the record: The cost of textbooks is not a result of the publisher's desire to screw the student (at least not in the biological and physical sciences), it is due to the free-market ownership of individual photographs or charts, which must be paid for by the publisher for the right to publish it.
Additionally, I'd like you to consider that each textbook you buy is at least 300 pages of color printing.
hmmmm?
The problem is that universities grant textbook publishers a monopoly be requiring a certain specific textbook for each course. The school never says "Go buy a calculus book." If they did, there would probably be substantial price competition in the textbook market as publishers fought for market share among students who had a wide selection to choose from. Instead, the school says "Go buy this calculus book." Since the publishers know that the only students who will have an interest in buying their books in the first place are the ones who are required to buy them, there is no competition and they can charge whatever they want.
Publishers do have to compete at the level of the university teachers and administrators who get to select which textbook will be required, but since the people who make that decision won't ever have to actually purchase the book they aren't likely to care about price.
"a fact checker ... that compiles things from various sources and then presents it to a human to do final checking?"
Offtopic, but you may wish to play around with FACTory, a 'game' where you anwser trivia-like questions mined from the web and other sources. If enough people agree that a statement is true, it is entered in the Cyc Knowledge Base, a quite large knowledge base suitable for natural language processing, AI and/or Semantic Web-research.
(You have also a LGPL-version, OpenCyc, and ResearchCyc -- free for non-commercial/research use.)
Women aren't a different species, for Christ's sakes. Let's face it, men have their own code: like, a man will say: "let's see other people, when that really translates to: "I want to see other people, but I want you to just see me." Or a man will pretend he's listening, but then his eyes will glaze over, and you have to be aware to look for the signs when you've lost him in the conversation. The only way to revive him is to talk about sports or technology or sex. Stat. I'm half kidding, here
I'm probably going to get modded down for this..
There is no guarantee when you pick up most books that they're factual.. even if they say non-fiction on them; it is up to the reader to weigh evidence and decide..
In this case it's even more so. It's his personal RECOLLECTION of events. So what if he lied, if you enjoy the story, just take a big fat magic marker and cross out 'Memoir' and write 'Fiction'. Then shut up.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
"profit margins are too small to fact check "non-fiction" books"
Sound to me like they just want to keep larg profit margins and really don't want them any smaller. I still hold the publisher responsible for errors in books published as facts.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
All so-called memoirs are "embellished". The publishers know that - have always known that.
The only difference here - is that Holey Oprah decided to shoot her mouth off about the embellishments - and was shocked when she found out that the embellishments were embellishments - common.
Just read Jack Douglase's "My Brother Was An Only Child" or any of Tristan Jones books or Farley Mowat's "Never Cry Wolf" - which was supposedly about Farley living with wolves in Canada's far north (but he was never there!) a million other memoirs - including books about various events in Christ's life
Like Christs was the result of a virgin birth - that he later became a Zombie after he died and all the rest of the fairey tale.
You mean someone in the entertainment industry would lie to us?
Looks to me that they have a policy to lie. "We can't test it so it must be true" These guys would not make good engineers
What is going to happen next, will the President lie to us?
"Women are just like you"
There is no male equivalent to the entrapment that is "does my ass look fat in this" primarily because men don't generally care.
And ask yourself, when was the last time a man insisted a woman have a good job before dating them?
They're not the same, and while many of the behaviors overlap, many others are significantly different.
Oh, and lastly, women date assholes because conflict is exciting, and safety is dull. Many people are raised in an environment where conflict is the norm, so men (or women, this applies for both sides) who are stable are inexplicably boring.
Don't worry, though, you'll learn about them someday. But knock it off with the advice, it's wrong.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Only someone who has been in a serious relationship would know about "We need to talk."
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
People lie! If you remember this simple truth ;-) when reading memoires then you won't be suprised when you find out the author might have stretched the truth.
Sounds a lot like what TOOT (the old ZDNet UK Tool Of Objective Truth) used to do...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
This whole controversy stems from ignorance. Memoirs are almost always part truth and part fiction. That is why they are memoirs and not an autobiography. Memoirs are accounts of feelings not facts. If the average American is too stupid to understand the difference, then they deserve to feel frustrated.
Maybe if they did call the lawyers, certain "journalists" would start publicly and constantly speculating that they called the lawyers because the books were true. Or, at the very least, their commitment to the first amendment would be called into question repeatedly.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have done it, but the Liberal Crushing Machine that the media has become is a daunting foe to fight.
You misunderstand, and furthermore, you read into things which are not there! I don't hate women. Did I ever say I did? No. Did I say that all women are whores? No. I sure don't know where that 'quote' came from, because it's not even close to paraphrasing. I hold no resentment towards women. I think most women are great people, just like most men, even if they are a bit misled. No... I adore, admire and respect women.
What I did was hyperbolize to make a point, being that most heterosexual women DO NOT think like men, and I thought that perhaps my tongue in cheek attitude would be a good indicator of this. I guess I overestimated my satirical ability.
I do, however, hold resentment to is popular culture, and some of the women and men behind popular culture (particularly in the US) who say that men need to tell their women everthing, and the fact that they've convinced women that they need to know everything. They've brainwashed men to believe they need to do things that, quite frankly, divest men of their manliness and in the process they've created a generation of mostly spineless, unexciting men to whom women are completely unattracted, unintrigued, and bored with, and as a result men are stumped by women; men think women say one thing and go off and do another, because that is in effect what's happening!
They've convinced men to emotionally castrate themselves, to tell women everything they feel, convinced them that their mate needs to be their best friend, and otherwise undo millions of years of evolution; they've convinced everyone that women want fairytell lives, to live in surburbia and live happily everafter driving kids to soccer practice in minivans, and that if their man dosen't willfully provide these thing--it's time for counseling.
This is why women can't find a good man who can give them excitement and passion, and they end up seeking excitement and passion with assholes. I'm not even resentful at the assholes out there; they're filling a void left by the rest of us. I am, however, resentful of this new generation of wimpy men who feel they need to give women their phone number instead of ask for the womans'! I resent the males out there who wonder why they don't get a second date when they spill their heart out on the first date! How can anyone be attracted to this? They can't! I abhor men who have no respect for themselves and fall all over women like the mass media tells them to do. It's pathetic. Women love the cat & mouse game. The thing is, men have got to make the woman think the man is the mouse, yet be subtly assertive.
A real man is a challenge, and has some character. Note: macho guys (the assholes) aren't real men. They don't respect women, or indeed people in general, they're just jealous 13 year olds in an adult body. In addition, abusers of women should be dragged into the street and shot and buried in a shallow grave, plain and simple. I've read the ladder thoery, and while there may be some insight, it's mostly a bullshit rant. I think that any man with an actual personality and a set of balls can get a good, attractive woman, if they weren't beaten down by popular culture, that is. I don't know if you've seen the US version of survivor, but there was this one guy, Rupert Boneham a few seasons back. He's not the prettiest of me, and he looks somewhat like a reincarnation of Socrates... Yet unlike the rest of the men on the show he had some character and personality, and despite his looks, women across the country were falling for him, in part because, I think, it's been so goddamned long since anyone has seen a male on TV that didn't act like he was a eunuch!
I don't know how it is over in Poland (you link to a polish domain), maybe men are still men there. If so, congradulations, you're doing better than us. Don't call me a misogynist, though, because nothing could be further from the truth. If you don't like what I have to say, you can call me an asshole, ignorant, stupid, whatever; I don't care. I do however
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Women are just like you: They'd rather avoid a confrontation and hurt feelings than be brutally honest. What you call womaneese I call the univeral language of a polite letdown. Trust me, they are doing you a favor by not crushing you, or even worse, leading you on.
You're right, a good woman realize men aren't pilars of stone, but is there anything polite at all about giving out fake numbers, wearing fake wedding bands, accepting a number from a guy dopey enough to give his own out with no intent at all of calling him? Is it polite for a woman to give out their number, accept a date a week away and cancel that date 4 hours before zero hour--or worse yet, not cancel it at all, but not show up? Is it polite to mooch off of a man when a woman has no intention of a relationship? This is exactly what some women do. No. There is nothing polite about falsely rasing a person's hopes, to have them dashed later. I can understand giving out false information to avoid having to deal with really creepy men (perverts, etc), because I'm sure women have to deal with such men all the time. It's undoubtedly easier to appease the creep in the short term, especially if you never expect to see him again...
Is it any less hurtful to a man with honorable intentions? I'd rather take honesty any day of the week than looking forward to a date and instead of calling some old lady's house to ask for a girl who's not there. It's a ton easier and less hurtful just to say "I have a boyfriend", and if the man's really insistant, to say "He's over there" while pointing vaugely at a group of men.
They want what you want as well: Excitement, passion, and someone they can respect. Would you want a woman who is affraid to tell you what they think? Would you want a woman who thinks sex is somthing incredibly important, and that they would never suggest it because doing so might offend you? Would you want a woman who has no self identity?
I can't disagree with what you say, and that's the point I was getting around to in my previous post, before I forgot what I was getiing at (ooh shiny!)... But the thing is, I think that the mass media has confused everyone regarding what women want, including women. Society has turned men into pussies, and lead many women to believe that's what they want. When the guy gets dumped, he's thinking "But I did everything they told me to do", and the woman's thinking "God that was boring!" I was in this boat for a while, before I was enlightened by a woman who finally decided to be brutally honest, as you say. I've got to thank her, she screwed my head on the right way, and my life has been much better because of it.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Fiction sells better. : )
I would consider a lot of what you describe to be leading a man on, unfortunately. You're right though, in the long run it's best to meet a woman who respects you enough to explain the deal to you, and help you understand it.
I think that would benifit the great grandparent poster a lot.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Who fucking cares? If you cite every non-fiction book you read as a source in your research you might... but you might need to get your head examined for being so stupid, also.