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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."
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?
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.
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.
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.
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/
Hopefully people like Oprah will at least fact-check stuff before hanging their credibility out to dry.
Maybe they'll spell check too
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
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)?
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.
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.
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.
"Money has a strong influence on the weak minded."
--Oprah-Wan Kenobi.
If you had read it, you'd feel duped too.
This is slashdot. Even if you haven't read it, you'll feel duped in 48 hours.
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.
Madonna
Because Madonna keeps reinventing herself too much to keep a consistent fan base (she has always been able to keep a large fan base though). In addition Madonna doesn't seem nearly as active in confronting issues of every day Americans and increasing the literacy of average Americans.
Prince Charles
Unlike Charles she wasn't born into success, and not only did she work her way to where she is now but she did it while being black and a woman. 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.
Winnie the Pooh
Unlike Winnie, she exists. Also she in not a Pooh, and I have yet to know someone that can relate to a Pooh better then another human.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
He lied about being involved in a fatal train accident that took the lives of two high school students. From The Smoking Gun:
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In addition to these rap sheet creations, Frey also invented a role for himself in a deadly train accident that cost the lives of two female high school students. In what may be his book's most crass flight from reality, Frey remarkably appropriates and manipulates details of the incident so he can falsely portray himself as the tragedy's third victim. It's a cynical and offensive ploy that has left one of the victims' parents bewildered.
He accuses their dead child of lying to them on the night she died....but, it's all in good fun.
He accuses the police officer who arrested him of beating him and abusing him. Not so: the officer was very kind in not reporting that Frey was drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon when arrested:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/jamesfrey/freysides/
Liars hurt a lot of people.
It has been pointed out that Frey's lies don't do seriously ill addicts a lot of good.
He apparently has a tattoo that says: FTBSITTTD Fuck The Bullshit It's Time To Throw Down
His story is bullshit. Of the above Pabst Blue Ribbon arrest, The Smoking Gun writes:
That episode--a violent, crack-fueled confrontation with Ohio cops that resulted in a passel of serious felony charges--is a crucial moment in "A Million Little Pieces," serving as a narrative maypole around which many other key dramatic scenes revolve and depend upon for their suspense and conflict. Frey has repeatedly asserted in press interviews that the book is "all true" and he told Winfrey, "I think I wrote about the events in the book truly and honestly and accurately."
The Smoking Gun's article is excellent:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061james
And, if you don't think the truth is important, you won't care the the Bush White House is trying to get a NASA scientist to shut up about global warming:
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01
Doesn't matter; might be better if the NASA guy wrote a book describing how he singlehandedly "throws down" with a hurricane and kicks its ass. He'll make millions.
Martha Stewart spent more time in jail for lying than this guy did for his Pabst-crack fest...I suggest we put him in woman's prison. He'd be somebody's bitch no matter which gender prison they sent him to....
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.
Accountancy rules are incredibly complicated, and as a result, allow distortions to be created. When a rule is complicated, the number of people who are likely to understand it is less than if the rule is simple. These experts are then typically employed by large corporations and accountancy firms, in part because they want to ensure compliance, but also because they want the accounts to tell the best story.
Accounts are often not a true reflection. A lot of companies hit the wall after a few years of good accounts. The accountants broke no rules, but instead had made them look as good as possible by using the rules to their advantage.
Savvy businesspeople will tell you to "look behind the accounts" because they know what a distortion they can be, and yet they are presented as a government-approved view of a public company. The only way this will change is if the rules are made simple in terms of what you can do in a company, and how accounts are reported.