Essay On The Journalist And The Murderer

As much as one romanticizes objectivity and telling facts without bias, it it impossible to hold objectivity a standard because bias is an inherent trait. Each newspaper has a bias, and each writer has their own upbringing and events which affect their writing. Janet Malcolm’s “The Journalist and the Murderer” helps to exemplify this through Joe McGinniss’s reporting and Malcolm’s take on his reporting. Both Malcolm and McGinniss pursue truth, but are unable to portray it in an objective manner. McGinniss extrapolates events to benefit his viewpoint, and Malcolm’s interview process is biased towards those who are more willing to be interviewed. While McGinniss’s actions can be attributed to malice against his subject and Malcolm’s can be attributed to opportunism, the real reason for both of their actions is due to the bipartite nature of the story preventing an …show more content…
She paints those that help/work for McGinniss as well as McGinniss himself as concerned about money and status. An example of this is McGinniss’s lawyer Kornstein, who acts antagonistically towards Malcolm. He acts dismissive of her and repeats “I’m sorry, I can’t answer you” (Kornstein, quoted in Malcolm Part 2, 1969, p. 69) several times throughout their interaction. Before she leaves, he also asks her if she “[knows] anything about [him]” (Kornstein, quoted in Malcolm Part 2, 1989, p. 70) in an attempt to assert importance and authority. Malcolm similarly regards McGinniss as disingenuous: “When, two days later, he called to cancel our future interviews and to say ‘I want to put all this behind me,’ I was not surprised, and rather relieved: I had begun to sense that McGinniss’s confession to me was not a new one” (Malcolm Part 1, 1989, pg 40). Both McGinniss and Kornstein had a strange distance to the case and did not want any more involvement, which consequently led to their portrayal in writing as reserved and