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The Return of Michael FinkelThe work of the disgraced Times Magazine writer appears on the cover of National Geographic.

By Jack Shafer
Posted Friday, July 27, 2007, at 6:39 PM ET

(Continued from page 2)

I also blanch at the passage on Page 180 where he blames the "distressed messages" his Times Magazine editor left on his voice mail for putting him in a "state of panic" that preceded his drug-fueled (Dexedrine) completion of the article. You could have canceled the vacation, dude, and gotten more time to write. Or you could have accepted a kill fee—the Times Magazine so worshipped you that more assignments had to be in the queue. It was your choice.

If murderers can be rehabilitated, surely one-time fabricators like Finkel should not be irredeemable. (The Times Magazine rechecked his other features and found nothing improper.) Obviously the Times can never employ Finkel again because doing so would make the paper look cavalier about accuracy. The circumstances of his deception, his statements to the press, and the account published in his book argue strongly against allowing Finkel back into the fold. While I can forgive Finkel personally and wish him no unhappiness, I bear him a grudge for the damage he's done to his profession and for the reader trust he's violated. I wouldn't give him an assignment.

But it's not like Finkel is begging our pardons. More than anybody, he seems to endorse the justice of the long-lasting grudge. As he writes in True Story, "I will never forgive myself."

******

Disclosure: About a decade ago, I wrote a piece for the New York Times Magazine. I'm also the guy who edited Slate's monkeyfishing story. Forgive, forget, or hang? What say ye's should be filed at . (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum, in a future article, or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)

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Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.
Photograph of Michael Finkel by Chris Anderson.
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Remarks from the Fray:

My favorite articles on The Slate inevitably revolve around what I think of as a presumption of "journalistic integrity."

Here we have a writer filled with incredulity at the notion that so many journalists have passed off the writing of others as their own, while still keeping their jobs? How can this be? Journalists are supposed to be above reproach, people of pristine character, wise beyond their years, etc.

When will journalists ever learn? They are the only people who believe their is such a thing AS journalistic integrity. The rest of us have pretty much rolled our eyes, and moved on.

Attention all "Journalists." We readers already know you don't have any integrity, so maybe quit pretending this is an issue. It's not....

--FBH

(To reply, click here.)

Just as there's a law against criminals profiting from books about their crimes, there should be one against journalists profiting from books that explain and excuse their ethically criminal forays into fiction.

Anybody remember Little Jimmy, the eight-year-old heroin addict who won Janet Cooke a Pulitzer before he turned into a "composite" character? Cooke gave back the prize and (at least to my knowledge) had the grace not to write a book about what she did. But that was so long ago. . .

Compared to Finkel's $500,000, (which Shafer says he believe he "earned") Jayson Blair was a piker. His book advance was said to be in the $100,000 range. Finkel got half a million dollars for his book? There are thousands of hard-working journalists the country over who wouldn't dream of doing what Finkel admits doing, let alone writing about it. Maybe Finkel's prose is sterling. Maybe he used to be a gifted journalist, and he made a lot of friends at a lot of magazines. But he wrote fiction disguised as fact, sold his editors and his readers a bill of goods, and for that he gets $500,000 to rationalize his actions?

How does a disgraced journalist pay his debt to his profession and to his readers? That's a question Michael Finkel appears never to have asked himself. He's been too busy "earning" his way back to to an unsuspecting public's good graces, thanks to too-forgiving editors who are more concerned about poor Michael than their readers.

--jeremiad40

(To reply, click here.)

(7/30)

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