Today in journalism fraud.

I missed this last week: the Seattle Weekly published a story by freelance writer Rick Swart, alleging that crime writer Ann Rule misrepresented facts in her book Heart Full of Lies: A True Story of Desire and Death. This is the kind of thing I would have paid a lot of attention to if it came across my radar; my mother is a big Ann Rule fan, and I’ve read a few of Rule’s books by way of her. I like Rule’s writing enough to be distressed at the thought.

Yeah. Well, I’m glad that story didn’t come to my attention until today, because it turns out things are more complicated than that. To start with, Rick Swart is engaged to Liysa Northon, the woman at the center of the case. (Ms. Northon was convicted of killing her husband, Chris Northon. Ms. Northon pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter, and received a 12-year sentence.)

Not only did Mr. Swart not divulge this relationship to the editors of the Seattle Weekly, he argues that he wasn’t under any obligation to.

“It’s a freelance piece first of all. I’m selling you a product. So it’s not like you’re my boss and you need to know my personal life.”

What makes this particularly offensive is that Mr. Swart is an experienced journalist; you would expect both that he would know better, and that he wouldn’t have this kind of arrogant attitude. Apparently not.

(Hat tip on this to The Rap Sheet.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Books, Clippings, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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