You Can Debate The Truth

by Steven Zeitchik, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 6/21/2005

The anti-Klein (or should it be anti-anti-Hillary) camp is beginning to organize. Media Matters, the group run by another ideological costume-changer, the conservative-turned-progressive commentator David Brock, has issued a letter in Brock's name that questions sourcing and fact-checking methods in The Truth About Hillary.

Citing "gay-baiting innuendo" the book "seek[s] a public explanation of what, if any, editorial standards and fact-checking processes the Penguin Group applies to its imprint" and goes on to say that "the public, and the Clinton family, deserve an explanation" for a book that's "obviously false and defamatory." It ends boldly: "I can assure you that if this matter is not redressed satisfactorily, Penguin's actions won't be forgotten as progressives shop for books."

Asked in an interview if he was advocating a consumer boycott, Brock stopped just short. "The question is what leverage do you have and I think it has to be entertained that there's economic pressure that could be brought to bear." He also said he cited specific author names in the letter--Nadine Gordimer, Garrison Keillor and Salman Rushdie, as well as more political authors like Al Franken, Lewis Lapham and Maureen Dowd--in the hope that they or their readers can add further pressure to the publisher

Of course the big question this raises, besides the usual one about a book publisher's fact-checking responsibilities, are what happens when corporate publishers get so large and diverse they nearly all have an author or imprint with whom other house authors might disagree. Brock, published by Crown, said he was troubled when he heard the house had signed up Ann Coulter through Crown Forum, though he stressed it wasn't conservatism that troubled him but journalism. "It's not the politics. It's that they've packaged these things as news and reporting when in fact they don't meet those standards." He said that this attitude was previously a hallmark of smaller niche publishers but it was now "spreading" to large houses.

A Sentinel spokesperson deferred comment, saying it was a Penguin matter, and a Penguin spokesperson did not immediately return a call by press time.