Truth vs. the facts

This whole hoo-hah about James Frey's A Million Little Pieces and Oprah's apology for her on-air call to Larry King defending Frey brings up the journalist's job of using facts to create Truth. That's what journalists do, you know, use facts as a means to an end. The trick is knowing which of the thousands of gatherable facts should be kept and which left out. There are always too many facts, and the mere choice of one fact over another demeans Truth to the absolutist, to the Modernist who believes only in facts.

William Shawn, the great former editor of the New Yorker, sets us up here: "The New Yorker has devoted itself for 59 years not only to facts and literal accuracy but to truth. And truth begins, journalistically, with the facts." (He said this, apparently, about a non-fiction story that used made up characters and quotations.)

Great quote, but notice that he says truth begins with the facts. Facts and literal accuracy can get us off the ground, but can relying only on the facts without the writer's weaving of them create Truth? Can we have woof without warp? Doesn't the very creation of narrative sully the purity of Facts?

I know I can step on a few toes here, but I believe the old saw may be right: "Don't let the facts get in the way of the Truth." (It ranks right up there with: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out.") I don't think a simple reliance on facts always makes for a good story, and it certainly won't always drop you off at Truth's door.

I am not advocating making up facts, but I think intelligent inferences in some stories (such as cerainly went on in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood) is acceptable, if not necessary. If we know that 2 plus X equals 5, then is it a lie to say that 3 plus X equals 6, even though, technically, X is still unknown to us? If Capote reconstructs conversations the murderers had from their own recollections, is that wrong? The factual accuracy may have been lacking, but wasn't the Truth shown?

I suppose this is why my colleagues keep me out of teaching the reporting classes -- they think I will ruin our students. . . . I do think it is a worthy topic for discussion, and I hope the students get that.

Oprah, in her apology to her viewers today, made this exact point in her call to LKL. She said during the call, in essence, that just because Frey lied about some facts, the Truth of his story had helped all sorts of people, so what was the big deal? She was right to recant today, but it shows the issue and the power of Truth in the face of facts.

Frey was wrong. I do think, however, that sometimes an over-reliance on the facts can get in the way of the story, and maybe even keep us from getting at Truth.