Books like The Journalist and the Murderer

Well, I read this. And as I initially suspected I would, I hated it. I had just finished Fatal Vision, which includes a rebuttal to this very book - and like any good journalism student, I knew I had to read it to get the other side of the story.I don't take Malcolm's central argument as offensive. It's true that journalists work on very shaky moral ground, all the time. And some of her reporting was very good. Reading McGinniss's letters to MacDonald really surprised me - he seemingly went out of his way to make Jeff think that he was still his best friend, and that I found upsetting. In fact, I would say Malcolm's case is pretty well-written and thought-provoking, if it wasn't for these couple of sentences:"I have read little of the material he has sent - trial transcripts, motions, declarations, affidavits, reports. A document arrives, I glance at it, see words like "bloody syringe," "blue threads," "left chest puncture," "unidentified fingerprints," "Kimberly's urine," and add it to the pile. I know I cannot learn anything about MacDonald's guilt or innocence from the material. It is like looking for proof or disproof of the existence of God in a flower-- it depends on how you read the evidence. If you start out with a presumption of guilt, you read the documents one way, and another way if you presume his innocence. The material does not 'speak for itself.'"WHAT??? With those sentences, Malcolm lost any credibility she had with me. Why? Because she simply did not do her job. She made a claim she could not support, NOT due to lack of material, but because she was lazy. She wouldn't read the physical evidence. As anyone who has read Fatal Vision knows, as anyone who was at that trial or on that jury or who worked on that case for years knows, the reason people think MacDonald is guilty is the physical evidence. The fact that she could just write all of that off -- that she thought it was below her, even though it convinced an entire jury and numerous judges and investigators, even though what hung in the balance was the murder of three people -- makes me feel nothing but disgust for her and this book.Plain and simple, she was sloppy. And the first rule that all reporters learn is that if you screw up your reporting, you will lose your credibility. Always call that extra source. Always walk that extra block. Always walk up to one more person. Always READ ALL THE EVIDENCE.So that pissed me off. As well as this quote: "the journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the griefs and shames of others."What an idiotic statement. Did she not just write a whole book on how messy and ungentlemanly journalism can be? Oy vey. I cannot handle this woman.UPDATE 9/9/2012: I've been thinking more about this book since reading A Wilderness of Error and I wanted to add to it. The truth is that I DO find parts of Malcolm's central argument offensive. The first line: "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."Um, no. I'm a journalist and I think what I do is completely morally defensible. I ask people questions, I get answers and I write them down. I don't take statements out of context. I make my intentions clear to every interview subject. I write what I learn, truthfully. And if I break any of these rules, I deserve to be called out for it. Journalism is central to truth. It is central to the weeding out of corruption, deception and ignorance. When journalists and their work contribute to those things instead of fighting them, then they are NOT journalists and what they do is NOT journalism. Janet Malcolm's self-indulgent book does nothing to help elucidate the motives of journalism. Instead, it proves her to be a writer more committed to writing out every convoluted thought in her head than to finding the truth. I find her book to be morally indefensible, not my profession.