Journalists Speak Out

Oprah: Richard Cohen is a Washington Post columnist who wrote in the case of James Frey: "The liar whose memoir turns out to have a good deal of fiction alongside fact." [Richard Cohen also] said, "Oprah is not only wrong but deluded." And I was impressed with that. I was impressed with that because I thought sometimes criticism can be very helpful. So thank you very much. You were right. I was wrong. What do you want to say?

Richard Cohen: I would say to the publishing industry, you guys have got to cut this out. You're not little shops anymore with two or three people working with quills. You're part of large corporations. Hire somebody for $25,000, $30,000 a year as a fact checker. A fact checker would have found out in a half an hour that some of this book didn't work because the book doesn't pass the smell test. ... When it doesn't pass the smell test, you give it to a fact checker. Work it out. Somebody could have done what The Smoking Gun did. They could have done it. Publishers have to do it from here on end. There is a difference between truth and fiction. We find this out all the time. Now we're finding it out again. This was a betrayal of his readers. It was a betrayal of you.