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  • The Journalist and the Murderer

  • Written by: Janet Malcolm
  • Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
  • Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins
  • 3.0 out of 5 stars (2 ratings)

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The Journalist and the Murderer

Written by: Janet Malcolm
Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
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Publisher's Summary

Janet Malcolm delves into the psychopathology of journalism using a strange and unprecedented lawsuit as her larger-than-life example: the lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision. Examining the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject, Malcolm finds that neither journalist nor subject can avoid the moral impasse that is built into the journalistic situation.

This audiobook is a work of journalism as well as an essay on journalism: It at once exemplifies and dissects its subject. In her interviews with the leading and subsidiary characters in the MacDonald-McGinniss case, Malcolm is always aware of herself as a player in a game that she cannot lose. The journalist-subject encounter has always troubled journalists, but never before has it been looked at so unflinchingly and so ruefully. Hovering over the narrative is the MacDonald murder case itself. The Journalist and the Murderer derives from and reflects many of the dominant intellectual concerns of our time, and it will have a particular appeal for those who cherish the odd, the off-center, and the unsolved.

©1990 Janet Malcolm (P)2015 Tantor

What the critics say

"An elegantly written, thought-provoking, and sometimes outrageous essay that should be in every media collection." ( Library Journal)

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