Word: masson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...consternation of many journalists, however, the meaning of those quotation marks has been blurred by a three-judge panel of the U.S. appeals court in California. In a 2-to-1 vote, the judges this month dismissed a libel suit by psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson against New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm, holding that a writer may misquote a subject -- even deliberately -- as long as the sense is not substantially changed. Malcolm's articles attributed to Masson some dozen phrases he contends were altered or fabricated. Most offensive to him was a supposed self-characterization as an "intellectual gigolo...
...court ruled that even if Masson did not say those words, Malcolm's inventions were permissible because they did not "alter the substantive content" of what he actually said, or were a "rational interpretation" of his comments. Judge Alex Kozinski fiercely dissented: "While courts have a grave responsibility under the First Amendment to safeguard freedom of the press, the right to deliberately alter quotations is not, in my view, a concomitant of a free press...
Last March, as Masson's suit was pending, Malcolm sparked a debate about press ethics with a New Yorker article that began, "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." Although she focused on a ruptured relationship between author Joe McGinniss (Fatal Vision) and his subject, murderer Jeffrey MacDonald, many readers assumed that Malcolm was writing confessionally, if unknowingly...
That controversy proved fleeting, but the impact of the Masson case will probably linger. Journalists publicize any prominent reporter's willful lapse from factuality because they consider it uncommon, hence newsworthy; the irony is that the coverage prompts many readers to assume that such failings are widespread. Many a journalist has felt the temptation, as Malcolm allegedly did, either to skip the drudgery of poring over notes or, having perused them in vain, to concoct the perfect quote to make the point. Such behavior may be legal. But as every journalist knows, it is, in Malcolm's own words, "morally...
...made for that more contemporary medium, TV. His Falstaffian girth, so impressive on stage and screen, seemed grotesque when stuffed into the small tube. The voice that shivered the old Philco during the ( Depression sounded hokey when it was used to seduce would-be sophisticates of the '70s. "Paul Masson will sell no wine before its time" joined the fleeting body of marketing folklore and spun off into dozens of jokes. (In one, the Welles impersonator intones the line, glances at his watch and says impatiently, "It's time...