Whipped Cream Difficulties

Obit watch: Patty Andrews, the last surviving Andrews Sister. (NYT. A/V Club.)

If a publisher is reissuing a non-fiction book, do they have an obligation to go back and do fact checking? What if the facts have been called into question since the book was issued? What if the book is “38 Witnesses” by A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times?

In the years since, however, as court records have been examined and witnesses reinterviewed, some facts of both the coverage and the book have been challenged on many fronts, including the element at the center of the indictment: 38 silent witnesses. Yet none of the weighty counter-evidence was acknowledged when Mr. Rosenthal’s book was reissued in digital form by Melville — raising questions of what, if any, obligation a publisher has to account for updated versions of events featured in nonfiction titles. Dennis Johnson, the publisher of Melville House, said he knew about the controversy but decided to stand behind Mr. Rosenthal’s account. “There are, notably, works of fraud where revising or withdrawing the book is possible or even recommended, but this is not one of those cases,” he said. “This is a matter of historical record. This is a reprint of reporting done for The New York Times by one the great journalists of the 20th century. We understand there are people taking issue with it, but this is not something we think needs to be corrected.”

What is there to correct?

As early as 1984 The Daily News published an article pointing to flaws in the reporting. In 2004 The Times did its own summation of the critical research, showing that since Ms. Genovese crawled around to the back of the building after she was stabbed the first time (her assailant fled and returned) very few people would have seen anything.
The article quoted among others Charles E. Skoller, the former Queens assistant district attorney who helped prosecute the case and who also has written a book on it. “I don’t think 38 people witnessed it,” said Mr. Skoller, who had retired by the time of the interview. “I don’t know where that came from, the 38. I didn’t count 38. We only found half a dozen that saw what was going on, that we could use.” There were other mitigating factors as well; it was a cold night, and most people had their windows closed.

This 2009 NPR interview goes into more detail about the many problems with the popular narrative of the case.

This lead made me giggle:

George Ryan was released from a federal prison in the dark on Wednesday morning, and Illinois became a state with only one former governor behind bars.

Hey, as long as we’re talking about crooked governors:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s approval rating has fallen sharply among New York voters since he pushed restrictive gun laws through the Legislature, a poll released on Wednesday said.

And lying politicians:

…it is also curious that the White House refuses to provide any documentary evidence that he actually used the shooting range at Camp David, since he claims he uses it “all the time,” or that a presidential friend has not come forward to confirm the president’s comments.