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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."
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 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'm glad she tore into him; he deserved that. Still, why wasn't that her first reaction? What do women really want, then? The cynic in me says that when women complain about finding out that men aren't honest, they're not asking for us to be honest. They're asking us to be better at lying to them, and to create more perfect illusions. So do women want honesty, or do they just want a compelling storyteller- a guy who can tell her she's a princess (when she's not), and that he's Prince Charming (when he's not), and that her ass doesn't look big in those jeans (when it does)?
It matters because the book was billed as an honest account of a serious addiction and how to get out of it. If people's view of addiction is twisted by misinformation, that can lead to misunderstandings and inappropriate methods of coping for addicts and their close ones.
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.
The mayor of the fucking city has more than a slight responsibility to figure out what is going on in his city before he goes to hang out with Oprah and spread bullshit. If some wild-eyed nutjob hobo claims murder in the Superdome, it can be safely ignored. When the primary governmental authority in New Orleans claims murder in the Superdome, he had damn well better be sure it happened. That's called "responsibility," and it comes with the job. This isn't some international crime ring. It doesn't require James Bond. Either there was murder in the Superdome or there wasn't, and if Ray Nagin can't be bothered to find out which it is before he shoots his mouth off on national syndication, then he's not doing his job.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
Most 'news' nowadays is just repeating what other people say, rather than doing original research. After all, if all your news is just "so and so said", then you can't be sued for telling lies, since "so and so DID actually say this, we never said it was true or false."
THAT is the reason I don't bother with MSM anymore. It's all worthless PR.
Oprah will believe anything. She exists to frighten stay-at-home midwestern housewives and, simultaneously, sell them a new brand of bleach. If Oprah didn't have her bizarre lies and scaremongering, then the frightened masses would stop watching. As it is, they _have_ to watch, otherwise they might miss the latest news about dangerous shady characters who kidnap little boys from school, mail them to Thailand in small parcels, and sell them into slavery in the broomstick rape industry.
DON'T MISS IT! THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOUR CHILD!
The "Million Little Pieces" incedent is minor as far as I am concerned.
Step into the $2.55 million dollar Manhattan penthouse he bought with his lies and you might just change your mind. There's also mention of a summer home in cozy Amagansett.
It also almost got him a screenplay based on the book, and another based on the Hell's Angels. Look him up on IMDb.
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.
Along these lines, Ken Lay's trial has now begun. A theme of his defense is that he was just a good old boy who was misled by evildoers within Enron. Whether or not that's the case
Issues like this pop up fairly often. When does an individual obtain so much power and influence that it becomes not only irresponsible but legally actionable for that person to say "I was misled; and therefore misled you"? One could say, "well, we're all responsible for our own investments," and I guess that's true. All of us reading Slashdot are clearly SuperWise folk who assiduously manage our investments, balance our checkbooks, and clear the cookies out of our browsers every day. But our dear Grandma Gertrude,
In one extreme limit, we protect Grandma Gertrude by creating an oppressive nanny state, in which regulations are thick and heavy
What I am suggesting here is that it might be far more effective to "hang" Oprah --- to stomp her ratings, dent her popularity, deflate her ego --- than it would be to point out that the author of "million little pieces" is an exaggerator. Similarly, it might be more effective to toss Ken Lay in the brig than to contemplate a better regulatory regime.
You're not paying $200 because it costs $200 for the most cost effective producer to produce the book. You're paying $200 because that's what the only legal producer of the book knows that enough students will pay when their only alternative is to go without the book.
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 a monopoly market, the monopoly owner sets the price at the point where many consumers can just barely afford the product, because that's what maximizes total revenue. In one situation, the cost of production has something to do with the price, in the other it has nothing to do with the price.
So, for all you know, and for all you can do, the publishers may be snorting coke for your money. It's not like you can legally obtain a version of that specific book from someone who's actually checked the facts, or who's selling it for $5 when all they're doing is paying for a print run.