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The Journalist and the Murderer (Paperback)

by Janet Malcolm (Author), Ian Jack (Introduction)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 163 pages
  • Publisher: Granta Books; New edition edition (15 Jan 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1862076375
  • ISBN-13: 978-1862076372
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.4 x 1.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 286,837 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #82 in  Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Law & Disorder > Criminal Investigation

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Product Description

Product Description
"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible." Janet Malcolm begins this book with the words above, which have become famous (and infamous), and then sets out to demonstrate the charge with the story of the lawsuit between Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, and Joe McGinniss, the author of a book about the crime.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Cleave the tautology of 'journalistic ethics', 21 Sep 2005
In this beguiling work, Malcolm ascribes to the journalist-subject relationship the phenomenum which Heisenberg, working in atomic physics, characterised as the uncertainty principle: namely that through the process of observation, the observer alters the outcome.

To explore the question, she studies a curious legal case in which a triple-murderer successfully sued an author who reported his case: the jury ruled that the writer had wilfully and maliciously misled the convict to such a degree that he was liable, to the tune of $350k, for his subject's wounded feelings.

Malcolm, in forensic detail, attempts to determine the point at which journalistic licence becomes outright lying; and the point at which humouring a subject in order to extract a story becomes manipulation.

Although at times dry, and at others veering towards being sanctimonious, any working journalist who is not too proud or too self-deluded will at least feel uncomfortable pangs - even if they are not finally persuaded that their trade is 'morally indefensible.'

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An important book about journalism, 7 Jun 2009
By kimbofo (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   
Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer famously caused an outcry within the media when it was first published as a two-part article in The New Yorker in 1989. Its oft-quoted opening sentence -- "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible" -- seemed to lay down the gauntlet, calling the ethics of journalism into question.

But Malcolm is a journalist herself and so the book must not be condemned on the basis of this first line, nor should it be viewed as summing up the author's views. Indeed, it becomes clear upon reading The Journalist and the Murderer that Malcolm has mixed views about her profession, which I'm sure is true of most journalists today, myself included.

What this book really examines is the relationship between journalists and sources in the context of non-fiction books and the difficulties which face both parties. While the journalist must remain impartial in order to render the truth, he must do whatever he can to convince his subject to be frank and open with him. Meanwhile, the source must come to trust the journalist enough to share his or her most intimate secrets. Such unspoken rules are fraught with difficulty, because what happens if the journalist writes something that upsets the source but which he knows is correct and truthful? Most journalists would say that they are only doing their job - and that's the view I take, too.

But what if the situation was slightly more complicated, and the journalist agreed to write a book about the source and was given unparalleled access to him and his closest family, friends and colleagues? The dynamic might change, a close friendship might result, but surely the journalist still has a job to do and is honour-bound to remain objective and to write events as he sees them? After all he's not in the business of writing flattering, gratifying portraits (unless, of course, that's the "truth"), because he's not a publicist but a journalist.

Tricky, isn't it? And even more so if the source doesn't quite understand the rules of the game and mistakes the journalist's so-called friendship for a genuine intimacy, when it's essentially a means to an end: the journalist has wooed the source in order to extract information. Interestingly, Malcolm calls sources "victims" but she also points out that far too many "victims" are willing ones.

"Something seems to happen to people when they meet a journalist, and what happens is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. One would think that extreme wariness and caution would be the order of the day, but in fact childish trust and impetuosity are far more common. The journalistic encounter seems to have the same negative effect on a subject as the psychoanalytic encounter. The subject becomes a kind of child of the writer, regarding him as a permissive, all-accepting, all-forgiving mother, and expecting that the book will be written by her. Of course the book is written by the strict, all-noticing, unforgiving father."

Malcolm really gets to the heart of this very thorny issue by examining the famous lawsuit between a convicted murderer, Jeffrey MacDonald, and a journalist, Joe McGinness, who wrote about the crime.

MacDonald, a United States Army doctor, was accused of murdering his pregnant wife and their two infant daughters in 1970. Before the case had come to trial, McGinness, a hugely successful non-fiction writer, had secured MacDonald's co-operation in turning his story into a book on the condition that he would have complete editorial freedom. He also made arrangements to sit in on the trial, was given full access to McDonald's legal team and even lived with defense counsel and the accused during proceedings.

The book was published under the title A Fatal Vision in 1983 (admittedly I read it when I was in my late teens) and turned into a TV mini-series starring Karl Malden in 1984 (I think I probably watched that too, but I couldn't be sure). MacDonald's misguided belief that the book would exonerate him in the eyes of the public did not come to pass. Instead, Fatal Vision states that MacDonald's guilty verdict is the correct outcome, describing him as a "womaniser" and "pathological narcissist". It even goes so far as to purport a motive for the crime: MacDonald killed his family in a fit of psychotic rage caused by amphetamine use.

A writ claiming McGinness had breached his contract was duly served, and it is this case, later settled out of court following a mistrial, which Malcolm dissects using actual court transcripts and her own behind-the-scenes interviews in The Journalist and The Murderer. It is absolutely fascinating reading, if only to see the duplicit lengths that a journalist will go to to get his story. And it would seem that the "morally indefensible" act to which she refers in her opening sentence is not about journalism per se but to McGinness's betrayal of his source: pretending that he believed MacDonald was innocent long after he became convinced of his guilt.
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