The Journalist and the Murderer [Hardcover]

Malcolm answers these questions (as much as she's able to) in the context of a murder trail that journalist Joe McGinniss wrote about, after being given unlimited access to accused murderer Jeffrey MacDonald and his defense team. McGinniss, originally sympathetic to MacDonald, comes to believe that he is guilty of the murder (the jury agreed), but does not reveal his change of heart to MacDonald, in order to maintain access to him. Once McGinniss's book, Fatal Vision, is published, MacDonald is horrified by the portrait presented to him and sues McGinniss for fraud.

Malcolm raises issues that I, a constant reader of journalism, had never considered. Her book gave me insight into what a writer must do to get the story. She's made me a less naïve reader. Those long articles in The New Yorker will never seem the same.

Janet Malcolm does not reopen the MacDonald case in her book, "The Journalist and the Murderer." Rather, she examines the issues behind a libel case that MacDonald brought in 1984 against his supposed friend, Joe McGinnis, author of "Fatal Vision." Joe McGinniss posed as a friend of Jeffrey MacDonald for years. McGinnis lived with MacDonald for a while and even joined his defense team. McGinniss sent MacDonald many sympathetic letters in support of his cause; in his letters, he frequently expressed his belief in MacDonald's innocence.

It was only after "Fatal Vision" was published that MacDonald discovered the truth. McGinniss did not believe in MacDonald's innocence. On the contrary, in "Fatal Vision," McGinniss portrays MacDonald as a psychopathic murderer. McGinniss posed as a friend for the sole purpose of keeping MacDonald in the dark about the nature of the book that McGinniss was writing. McGinniss's main motive was to continue to have access to MacDonald until the book went to press. "Fatal Vision" became a best seller and it was eventually made into a miniseries.

Malcolm's book, written in 1990, takes on added significance in 2003, when the ethics of journalists are under fire as never before. Time and again, journalists have been accused of plagiarism and of making up stories that they later presented as fact. The public is beginning to see journalists as fallible people who suffer from the same pressures, ambitions and even psychological disorders as other ordinary mortals. Journalists will sometimes lie and cheat to get their stories in print, and we must take what we read with a huge grain of salt.

Malcolm's book is not merely a condemnation of McGinniss's behavior towards MacDonald. Her premise is that the journalist's relationship to his subject is, in its very essence, a perilous one. The gullible subject babbles away to his "sympathetic" listener, revealing more of himself than he realizes. When all is said and done, the subject has no control over the final product of these interviews. The subject may very well be shocked when he sees that his words have been distorted and that the journalist has made him look bad in print. How will the subject get his reputation back now?

Malcolm portrays the journalist as a con man, who preys on people's loneliness, credibility and narcissism to get a good story. What is the lesson in all of this? Beware of placing your faith in the ethics of journalists. They have their own agendas and the "truth," which is elusive at best, is not always a priority. Malcolm's book is an important one, since it serves as a warning for those naive people who are only too eager to believe everything that they read in a newspaper or a magazine. What you read is only one person's version of the truth.

a) she had actually attended MacDonald vs. McGinniss, so that she could write from an informed viewpoint instead of relying on second- and third-hand accounts;

b) she had spent less time oohing and ahhing over MacDonald's personal magnetism, and stuck to the facts of the case at hand;

c) she had bothered to read the literary releases to McGinniss's publishing company, SIGNED BY MACDONALD HIMSELF, that gave McGinniss license to write any type of book he wished (including, one presumes, a book that might actually say that McGinniss himself had concluded that MacDonald was guilty, despite the friendship the Journalist may have felt for the Murderer);

d) she hadn't stated - repeatedly - the total fiction that the jury hung 5-1 in MacDonald's favor. The fact is, the jury hung on ONE QUESTION OUT OF THIRTY-SEVEN, never actually voting on the other 36, because one juror believed that MacDonald had violated his agreements with McGinniss by cultivating other journalists and by ignoring his agreement not to sue McGinniss.

Or is MacDonald next going to sue Malcolm, because in her very title, she herself calls him a murderer?

Let's call an egg an egg, Dr. Jeff. You killed them. Pay the price. Be done with it.