The Journalist and the Murderer
Janet Malcolm · 1990
Opens with one of the great opening sentences: "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." An essay about the ethics of journalism that uses a specific case to argue a universal point.
The case against
Malcolm generalizes one lawsuit, McGinniss versus MacDonald, into an indictment of all journalism, and the move never quite earns its scope. She wrote it while fighting her own libel suit over quotations, a circumstance the original text leaves out. Brilliant aphorisms; shaky evidence; physician, heal thyself.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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