Embedded Files
“The Journalist and the Murderer” reads like a crime courtroom drama that doubles as a textbook for journalism students struggling with questions of integrity, honesty, and dedication. Though the book is about a single journalist, we instead encounter three – all of whom have their own experiences and ideas of what counts as ethical journalism. Janet Malcolm, Joe McGinniss, and Bob Keeler along with writers Jeffrey Elliot and Joseph Wambaugh. All three write a book about the same case – each one, more critical than the last. The journalists face a similar dilemma, a daily struggle to balance journalistic ethics, with the drive to unravel the story and the need to stay relevant.
A brief summary of the book based on my understanding – Jeffrey MacDonald, a local physician, is convicted of the brutal murder of his pregnant wife and two young daughters. He and his lawyer, Bernard Segal, think it a good idea to bring in a journalist to write a book on the ‘real truth’ and cash in on a percentage of the royalties. Joe McGinniss, an established author takes up the story but reverses his stance, instead portraying MacDonald as a cold-blooded killer who without doubt murdered his family. Surprise surprise, the murderer takes the journalist to court.
McGinniss had quite an odd approach to playing the detached observer – living and spending hours with MacDonald. However, within the course of the murder trial and the guilty sentence, McGinniss is convinced his ‘friend’ is guilty. He assumes the role of the false confidant, the phony friend, the enemy infiltrator. For four years, McGinniss begins studying his subject, now in jail, through smuggled recordings, letters, and handwritten accounts by MacDonald, phone calls, and case files.
Joe McGinniss
It was definitely risky and perhaps careless allowing McGinniss into the inner circle of the defense team. Especially given his exposé on Richard Nixon and his advertising team in “The Selling of the President”. There were several red flags I noticed while reading his correspondence with MacDonald. Phrases like “I’m glad you didn’t kill yourself… would’ve been a bummer for the book” and “…you will become a non-person”, fed into the subject’s grandiose self-image. The subject’s normalcy to the murder of his family helped McGinnis process the complex relationship. He was able to compartmentalize his conflicting attitudes. McGinniss’s approach was: Is it betrayal if the man is a psychopath? His responsibility was to the book, not the person.
Bob Keeler’s book on the case is described by McGinniss as “disappointing” and “wasteful”. Keeler stayed on with the subject for a decade covering the trial for The Newsday Magazine. He aimed to write the story fairly, even-handed, balanced, and as a journalistic book. Reading from a set of prepared questions, he preached on journalism as a craft to practice, to talk to people, and to track things down. Bob Keeler’s approach was: You can’t betray someone you barely know.
Janet Malcolm
Janet Malcolm had the difficulty of losing her subject during her work on the book. McGinniss stepped away and Malcolm was left to work with MacDonald’s legal team. McGinniss had done to Malcolm exactly what he feared MacDonald would do to him – shut off further communication. The difference between Jeff MacDonald as a subject and Joe McGinniss as a subject (of Janet Malcolm) is that McGinniss, the trained journalist, knew when to get out.
It is interesting to note the ethical conduct expected in a journalist-subject relationship. Whether it is acceptable to mislead the subject, tell an untruth or plainly lie to the subject to gain his trust. Is it acceptable if the subject is a murderer? Where is the line of morality drawn? Subjects tend to trust in a journalist’s good intentions, equating the encounter with that of a psychoanalyst. We are expected to be the detached observer, refrain from human relationships with the observed object. The subject opens up to you but you do not open up to them. It would be natural for the subject to recognize the relationship as more than professional. However, a journalist is not expected by his profession to maintain that relationship unless the subject is an influential figure useful to the newsroom.
This piqued my interest in the ‘subject’ of the story. MacDonald was not a literary character. He was not particularly interesting, Not the ‘hero’ McGinniss looked for in his story. “A middle-class man with a flawed vision of the good life.” He enforced the notion that journalists are interchangeable. Keeler’s MacDonald, Malcolm’s MacDonald, and McGinniss’s MacDonald were all the same. The same answers to questions asked every which way. The cycle finally ended with Janet Malcolm deciding she had nothing more to gain from Jeffrey MacDonald – a man who had nothing more to lose.
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