Janet Malcolm Works and Review Book Report

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Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm

Book Overview

The Journalist and the Murderer was produced by Janet Malcolm and is focused on the transition in the ethics of journalism. This book was published and became popular in the early 1990s. However, there was also a series of articles that appeared in The New Yorker beforehand from the author that gained a considerable amount of attention and was the source of controversy. The story focuses on a man named Joe McGinniss who was murdered by a Special Forces captain in the military. The book takes a critical view of the evolutions in journalism which is evident from the very beginning of the book.

The story was based on the testimony of a man named Jeffrey MacDonald who was in prisoned for the murder of his wife and two daughters. MacDonald was the subject of a popular book by another author about a decade before the time. In this book, the convicted MacDonald was virtually tricked by the author of the book. He made MacDonald feel as if he was on his side and fully believed in his innocents. However, the author, McGinniss, was secretly working out a different narrative altogether to tell the story.

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He was pretending to be writing a book that would highlight MacDonald's innocence, but was painting the man as a narcissus while also taking several dramatic liberties in doing so.

Janet Malcolm found this practice to be morally indefensible. He criticized McGinniss in his work and accused him of omissions, distortions and outright misstatements of fact. '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. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse" Malcom said. Her position caused a debate in the industry. While some took her side, others defended works such as McGinnis's under First Amendment rights and other arguments. However, Janet Malcolm was really arguing against the integrity of the non-fiction industry which even included herself.

Malcolm was born in Prague in 1934 and moved to the U.S. sometime later. Her first husband was a book reviewer for The New Yorker and she undoubtedly picked up many skills from him. She was fearless in her career of going after moral issues….....

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