The queen of all media tossed this ethical grenade recently when she called CNN's Larry King to defend his guest, James Frey, author of mega-best-seller "A Million Little Pieces." Frey's memoir of addiction and recovery was featured on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" when it was anointed the October selection of the world's most powerful book club.
The champagne went flat Jan. 8 when The Smoking Gun, a Web site devoted
to investigative reporting, posted a damning story with the tantalizing
tagline "The Man Who Conned Oprah." What followed was an old-school piece of
"gotcha!" journalism that showed how Frey had embellished and, in some
cases, fabricated significant events in the vomit-stained account of his
life. Frey admitted to King he had taken dramatic license but said he stood
by "the essential truth" of his life.
As King was about to sign off, Winfrey phoned to say the report outing
Frey was "much ado about nothing."
What mattered, Winfrey said, was that millions of people struggling with
their own monkey-on-the-back habits had read Frey's book and felt better. In
a nation addicted to feeling good, she implied, swallowing a little pill of
deception is a small price to pay.
Winfrey's take on lying is not new -- Machiavelli said it first when he
wrote "the end justifies the means," the greatest rationalization for bad
acts ever -- and it appears plenty of Americans agree.
William Bastone, editor of The Smoking Gun, says that in the avalanche
of comments about the Frey expose, some 40 percent of people sent "how dare
you" messages. They were furious at the reporters, not Frey.
Bastone and staff were stunned. "Where's the outrage?" he says. It's the
same question he asked when Americans uttered a collective "Who cares?"
after Martha Stewart was jailed for lying to federal prosecutors about
whether she received a tip to dump her ImClone stock before it tanked. Once
Stewart was freed from prison, she did not go into hiding; she made public
appearances wearing her electronic ankle bracelet like a bauble from
Cartier.
When did public lying become a resume booster?
Read more on page 2 >>
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