It's always wild how you can publish fake stuff in a bestselling book that wouldn't make the cut at the most flexible-with-the-facts tabloid. Like when Isabel Oakeshott published the Cameron pig fucking thing then cheerily admitted her source was "slightly deranged". www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Surely you know the old song scratched on every Fleet Street pub wall "if you must do a libel, make it the queen/ or the PM for no writ will be seen"
The Salty Bacon Path
Private Investigator Allen Lane ready for duty on that due diligence
Tragically, Megan Bhari and ‘The Believe in Magic’ charity - another one.
Isabel Oakeshott is well-placed to recognise ‘slightly deranged’.
Did they ask her what name was on her passport?
Well they very clearly didn’t do “all necessary due diligence”. Which rather suggests that Penguin doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase.
But who is Penguin nowadays? "Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann" Not the "old reliable UK brand"? "It's just business" #news #itvnews #c4news #skynews #bbcnews
As someone wittier than I said, at least Hannah Ingram-Moore got someone else to do the walking.
I'm at least enjoying all the comment variations on "wouldn't it have been better to have a person do it?"
And yet at University, (at undergraduate level only, I hope) "I found it in a book" carries so much more credibility than "I found it in a magazine" And books live on, on "shelves"! (at least until the barbarians fully digitalise university libraries) #news #itvnews #c4news #skynews #bbcnews
Hey, if you'd seen Cameron do that to a pig then you'd end up deranged too ;)
Publishes are not obligated to check this stuff though. It's entirely on the writer.
Reputational damage is reputational damage.
Sure and the damage is to the writer.
Mostly.
As I understand it, not everything Dan Brown wrote was entirely true. Just move the book to the fiction section.
Do people really expect a travel memoir to be factually true? Does that actually matter for its impact as a piece of writing? A journalist running a news story about a PM is in a really different category of expectations and significance.
I doubt people would care if there was the odd embellishment, but when the premise of the book is a terminally ill person and their spouse find redemption through doing something after becoming homeless through no fault of their own, and none of that is true, it does fundamentally change things.
Do you mind when Fargo says "this is a true story" at the start of every episode, but it's all made up?
I haven't watched it.
It's not so much fact fudging, it's more the omission of how the catalyst for the journey wasn't a business deal gone wrong, it was embezzlement against a business that trusted these people. And that they said they had nothing, when owning French land, for which they allegedly owe taxes to the gov.
Ok, so it's largely fiction presented as 'true memoirs'. Does that matter for the actual book itself? Many many books do this. Embezzlement- well, that can be addressed in the real world through legal means. That's really, not a book.
OK, so try them presenting walking as a wellness cure for incurable illnesses. That's an incredibly dangerous thing to do. Tbh, I've not read the book bc I'm not into self-as-saviour memoirs so have no real feelings of loss about the actual 'memoir'. I am a published author of both fiction (1)
And other mediums where I've used memoir and nostalgia to engage with readers. To write something untrue - and to use it for significant financial gain - would feel like I'm betraying the readers' trust. But that's just me. I'm not the one with the court judgements for deceptive conduct. (2).
I just feel quite differently about the book's fiction and the author's lies, I suppose? I haven't read this one but I've enjoyed similar memoirs and film accounts of similar 'road trip/walking trip' voyages of self discovery &c. never expect them to correlate to reality no matter how they present
That's fair. We all come at books from different perspectives. I guess mine is from a writer's view who wouldn't want to mislead people in this case, rather than a6s a reader. I recently found out my favourite author is a complete scumbag, which is giving me a different moral dilemma.
Do you mind me asking if you've read the book? I understand it gives clear accounts of them stealing on a regular basis from small business owners on their walk of discovery. I'm curious as to how that sits with you. (3)
At least the Oakshott Bae of Pigs story gave us the most hilarious Sunday night of Twitter dot com (RIP) I ever experienced
Jack Monroe is another example of where some simple easy due diligence and a decent review or editor would have seen through her story and uncookable recipes. Would have meant she wouldn’t have been given the platform to grift and steal off her followers.
Delingpole?