The James Frey controversy: a year later

James Frey's second appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, January 2006

It’s been over a year since author James Frey appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show, tail between his legs, and admitted to fudging many of the details in his bestselling memoir of addiction and rehabilitation “A Million Little Pieces.” I watched Winfrey berate Frey for lying to her and to the millions of people who bought his book after she included it in her monthly book club, and I read angry reactions to Frey’s admissions from other authors and journalists. Frey lied about his own experience, and the furor over it still baffles me in light of the catastrophic lies we hear about on the news that affect millions of people around the world.

On Jan. 8, 2006, The Smoking Gun website revealed discrepancies between Frey’s actual run-ins with the law and the account in his book. Frey appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live to discuss the allegations and defend himself. Winfrey called in and spoke on air in Frey’s defense, “The underlying message of redemption in James Frey’s memoir still resonates with me,” she said. “And I know that it resonates with millions of other people who have read the book.”

But a couple of weeks later Winfrey recanted her support of Frey and apologized to her audience for defending him and giving them the impression that truth was unimportant to her. The talk show host summoned all of her moral authority and scolded Frey and his publisher, Nan Talese for an hour. But it seemed Winfrey was more concerned with damage control and buffing her own image than she was with showing Frey the error of his ways or inciting a fact-checking revolution at the publishing houses.

The controversy was overblown, and the lies Frey told in his memoir are insignificant compared to the lies the American public is told by its government. Frank Rich of The New York Times called lies such as those in Frey’s book “harmless diversion.” The trails of deceit and doublespeak crisscrossing the political landscape concern him much more. Rich observed, “It’s as if the country is living in a permanent state of suspension of disbelief.”

Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s connection to Osama bin Laden and 9-11, secret prisons and the use of torture, the indictment of powerful politicians and botching the Hurricane Katrina situation before, during and after the storm are some examples of recent governmental deceit and/or incompetence. Sure these failings were closely covered, but the outcry over Frey’s mendacity begs the question why we even bother with such paltry untruths when lies are being told at the highest levels resulting in the deaths of thousands around the globe?

I think the message of Frey’s work is still meaningful to people even if it is not entirely factual. I didn’t personally enjoy “A Million Little Pieces”; it was too graphic and repetitive, but I believe people can be enlightened, validated and encouraged by fictional writing, perhaps even if it is labeled nonfiction. Take the example of Rigoberta Menchú’s biography, which documented the repression and murder of Guatemalan peasants during that country’s 36-year civil war. After being confronted, Menchú admitted to lying about some details in her book. The injustices and atrocities she details in her book didn’t happen to her family as she wrote, but tens of thousands of people in Guatemala did suffer in the horrific ways she described. For me and for many people, the power of her message remained intact even after her lies were exposed. “I, Rigoberta Menchú” succeeded in opening eyes around the world to a bloody and unequal struggle of the very weak against the brutally strong even if it was not purely biographical. I think people who identified with Frey’s narrative in “A Million Little Pieces” probably feel the same way. People struggling with drug and alcohol addiction may be greatly helped by Frey’s story, and for them, its fabrications are utterly irrelevant.

So what was Frey’s punishment for duping millions? Well, his book is was on the New York Times bestseller list for 44 weeks, and for months bookstores around the country couldn’t keep it on the shelves. “A Million Little Pieces” sold over 4.5 million copies, and sales of Frey’s second book, “My Friend Leonard”, which picks up where MLP leaves off, benefited greatly from the controversy. So after being humiliated on TV and getting slammed by fellow writers, Frey is crying his way to the bank to cash his enormous checks.

"Natural" disasters in the news

If it seems like we hear more about major natural disasters than we used to, that’s because earthquakes, floods, fires and hurricanes have increased in frequency and severity in recent decades. But terming these weather events “natural” is misleading as it obscures the role of humans in causing the disasters.

According to an article on the UN’s website penned by former secretary general Kofi Annan, there were three times as many major natural disasters in the 1990s as in the 1960s, and the overwhelming majority of victims are residents of the Third World. Annan, and many others, point out that poverty forces people to live in dangerous areas – on flood plains, unstable hillsides, and in earthquake-prone zones. Unsafe buildings exacerbate the risks. What’s more, logging and imprudent agricultural practices can reduce the soil’s ability to absorb water, increasing erosion and flood risk.

You don’t have to go too far back in time to get a sense of the massive number of lives lost every year due to natural disasters. The 2005 earthquake in Pakistan killed some 40,000 souls only months after a massive quake in the Indian Ocean caused a tsunami that killed 229,866 people. Hurricane Katrina killed over 1,000 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, and several years earlier in 1998, hurricanes Mitch and George took 13,000 lives in Central America.

Although all these events were big stories in the international press, media critics complain the press selectively covers disasters in the developing world. Many deadly weather-related events there are never reported at all in the major Western media outlets. In his study called Disasters, Relief and the Media, Jonathan Benthall writes that the major news organizations’ recognition of a foreign disaster is “a prerequisite for the marshalling of external relief and reconstructive effort.”

Not only are disasters in the developing world underreported, writes Jaap van Ginneken in his book Understanding Global News, but labeling them “natural” dupes the public. He calls it “a highly ideological operation, which shifts the blame to the weather gods and away from anyone who might be in a position to do anything about the situation.” After all, it's necessity, not choice, that drives poor people to settle on unstable hills and in flood plains. The only solution to make people safer is to raise and enforce development and land use standards.

The media’s treatment of “natural” disasters is a good example of how the press prefers to report on events and not on long processes. Every event has root causes and an extensive background. It is the responsibility of good journalists to report disasters in all their complexity. The public should understand these so-called natural phenomena are actually the consequences of interactions between natural hazards, underdevelopment, and above all, poverty.

Read Kofi Annan's full article here.

Is it because he's Bosnian?

Bosnian children (a NATO photo)

The latest violent expression of our national gun culture occurred last week when Sulejman Talovic, 18, entered the Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City and started shooting. Before the police killed him, Talovic managed to shoot five people dead and injure four more.

Since deadly shooting rampages are far from uncommon in this country, it’s upsetting to me that the media didn’t take latest opportunity to probe deeper into the ghastly phenomenon and address some of the cultural questions about the role of violence in our society and the debate over gun control. Instead, the majority of the coverage centered on the gunman and specifically, his Bosnian Muslim heritage.

An article in The New York Times highlighted the Bosnian ambassador’s trip to Utah. Ambassador Bisera Turkovic met with the mayor of Salt Lake City and members of the Bosnian-American community there. Through tears, she felt the need to assure the people of Utah that Bosnians are peaceful people who are horrified by the mall-goers suffering. For suffering is something Bosnians are all too familiar with.

Perhaps the ambassador saw the trip as necessary damage control, considering the barrage of angry phone calls and emails pouring into the offices of Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson and other city officials. These people hold the Bosnian community in Utah and Muslims in general responsible for the horrendous incident. Mayor Anderson called theses conclusions “outrageous,” perhaps because this type of rampage has become a perverse pastime in this country.

It’s a real shame that instead of taking the occasion of another public shooting spree to come together and take an introspective look at the underlying causes of gun violence, we get caught up in the urge to blame someone, which pushes us further apart. This time we blame the shooter’s crime on his foreignness, his culture and his religion.

But the reality is that Sulejman Talovic was a furious young man with a violent past (he had threatened people at knifepoint twice) and access to guns, that’s it. The fact that he’s a Muslim, or a Bosnian, or an immigrant or whatever, likely has nothing to do with his act of horrific violence. Talovic, like so many other shooters that America can claim as native sons, was full of hate and had a desire to destroy. He lost respect for human life, and his rampage that killed five innocent people was nothing more than a twisted attempt to feel powerful.

As journalists and as a society we are asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking ourselves how Talovic’s “otherness” factored into his crime, we should turn the cameras around and try to discover what poison exists in our culture that drives so many people to vent their frustration by murdering innocent people.

ICE raids, radio pundits and me: part I

After a 15-hour day reporting on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley, I was grateful to be on the road, headed home. Anxious to temporarily forget the sad stories of abandoned children and frantic wives left behind, I scanned the radio waves for diversion.

But the Dec. 12 roundups of illegal workers at Swift plants in six states were the talk of the airways.

A particularly callous and xenophobic host on 850 KOA, known as Gunny Bob, had also turned his attention to the topic. He read an excerpt from a statement issued by an immigrant-rights group that condemned the feds for carrying out the raids without regard for “family values.”

Gunny Bob could not contain his disgust and incredulity.

“Values? What values?” he bellowed. “The breaking into my country value? The stealing my identity value?”

After 10 seconds of listening to Gunny Bob, I understood his politics on illegal immigration. No poor migrant driven by financial desperation to cross hundreds of miles of mean terrain wrought with natural and human hazards would earn his sympathy. As with most “news” pundits, Gunny is good at twisting facts and quotes to promote his own viewpoints.

Those of us with an understanding of the immigrants’ plight and a balanced view on immigration policy knew what the immigrant-rights group meant by its statement. Hundreds of children were left behind without one or both of their parents, and left with no source of income, mothers and wives faced homelessness.

ICE raids, radio pundits and me: part II

Of the 260 workers detained at the plant in Greeley, many were immediately deported, and 18 were charged with identity crimes. I was there the morning the first 10 made their initial appearance in court. They entered shackled at the wrists and ankles.

I sat next to the father of one young woman from Peru. He told me that in order to get a job, his daughter had purchased a birth certificate and social security card from a woman selling her own identity. It surprised people to learn that in large immigrant communities like Greeley, there’s a vibrant trade in identity documents, and many American citizens with Hispanic surnames are cashing in.

(Read The Denver Post's coverage of the raids here).

I acknowledge that undocumented immigrants break laws by entering and working in this country, but I also recognize that they are driven to do so by desperate circumstances that are well beyond their control. Contrary to what Gunny Bob and U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo would have us think, illegal immigrants do not come here to take advantage of our social services or to commit crimes. They come to work and to send money home.

That’s why for me it’s so sad when ICE swoops down and breaks up humble families just scraping by. It looks to me like a shameless attack on the most vulnerable people in our society. And let us not forget that the management of Swift has not been served with a single indictment in connection with the December raids, which makes the whole thing look even more like a below-the-belt onslaught on the little guy.

So it’s outrageous for me to hear people like Gunny Bob and Tancredo spout off about how we need to round up and deport all 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country. We have a very real problem with immigration and a system that is kaput and barely functioning. Lawmakers need to tackle comprehensive reform now, but the ideas of right-wing xenophobes like Gunny and Tancredo do not advance the dialogue in any constructive way.

The other world forum

Graffiti in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico

The annual World Social Forum just wrapped up in Nairobi, Kenya a couple of weeks ago. Not surprisingly, most TV cameras were pointed in a different direction, towards another global forum: the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The timing is no coincidence.

The World Social Forum is a meeting of anti-globalization groups and movements from around the world that oppose neo liberal economic policy and support alternative systems that respect the human rights of all the world’s citizens.

The World Social Forum is the other side of the coin that exposes the dark underbelly of rapidly-expanding global capitalism that the Davos event celebrates.

Because of the logistical nightmare of organizing an international protest at the World Economic Forum, and in order to divert at least some media attention, WSF organizers planned their conference to coincide with the capitalist soiree in Davos.

The first WSF ever was put together by Brazilian organizations and held in Porto Alegre in 2001. The event has inspired the formation of local and regional social forums. The first U.S. social forum will meet in Atlanta in June.

After the WSF wraps up, there are no triumphant declarations of consensus or concrete plans of action announced to the media. That’s because the WSF is meant as a process for activists to coordinate global campaigns, share and refine organizing strategies and inform each other about movements from around the world and the issues.

This year in Kenya, about 40 residents of a Nairobi slum overran the food courts at a few upscale hotels at the WSF. The people swarmed the tables and grabbed what they could before being chased out.

Some of the topics discussed this year were the IMF (“Shrink it or Sink it Campaign”), south-south cooperation, strategies on resisting the power of transnational corporations and fair debt arbitration. Other presentations focused on the sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and children, HIV-AIDS and the effects of diaspora remittances on development.
Check out the WSF website here

Chá-vision: all Chávez, all the time

Looking for middle ground: a telephone booth in Barcelona

President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, began a new six-year term in office last week and took the opportunity to announce huge changes intended to usher in what he calls a "new era" of "21st century socialism.”

In an outdoor session that resembled a political rally, Venezuelan lawmakers voted to give Chávez wide powers to rule the country by decree. Now el mandatario has the authority to reform Venezuela into what he hopes will be a prosperous, socialist example for the rest of Latin America.

The problem is Chavez' vision for Venezuela involves concentrating all the power in his own hands. And if he can swing it, Chavez plans to change the constitution regarding presidential term limits so he can rule Venezuela indefinitely.

Venezuelans and U.S. observers alike are used to Chávez’ fiery rhetoric. But even to those who secretly enjoyed hearing the Latin American leader refer to Bush as the devil at the United Nations, saw last week’s events as a lurch toward authoritarian rule.

Chávez announced plans to nationalize the telecommunications and electricity industries, place new taxes on the rich and increase state control over the oil industry. From the beginning, Chavez proclaimed his reforms are in the interest of Venezuela's poor. He argues that nationalization and other economic shake ups will ultimately serve to redistribute the wealth and close the rich-poor gap.

The proposed, populist measures surely pleased many in Venezuela, but the privately-owned newspapers in Caracas registered disgust by featuring damning editorials and condemnation of Chávez from foreign leaders.

Before Chávez' latest proclamations, he announced he would not renew the broadcasting license for RCTV, an opposition-run channel that supported the coup against him in 2002. Without the license, the station will be off the air by June.

Although Chávez’ promises often run way ahead of reality, he is taking decisive steps in an unsettling direction.

While his socialist promises may excite the people of Venezuela with visions of social-welfare programs, if foreign capital flies from the country provoking economic hardship - and the press is stifled in its opposition - the trade off may prove too costly.

A word on ethics

In considering the traditional philosophical frameworks used to understand ethics, utilitarianism is a good foundation for a news organization's ethical code. Simply put, the utilitarian view of ethical decision making is to opt for the greatest good for the greatest number. The consequences of the act are important in deciding whether or not it is ethical, and no one’s well-being is valued more than anyone else’s. Utilitarianism is a flexible philosophy that may allow journalists to justify shadowy writing and reporting techniques if that's the only way to get the truth for a story the public needs to hear. One problem is that it's difficult to foresee all the ramifications of an act, and journalists cannot make a habit of deceiving their sources.

Immanuel Kant’s ethical principles, on the other hand, may be too restrictive as the backbone of a newsroom's ethical code. Kant would have us act as if the principle underlying our actions would become universal law. So journalists could never justify lying or invading someone’s privacy to get the truth.

There should be some ethical middle ground. While journalists need freedom to gather information, deceptive reporting techniques should not exceed what the law permits and should only be used if the information cannot be obtained by other reasonable means.