Joe McGinniss obituary

Controversial writer and journalist known for Fatal Vision and The Selling of the PresidentIs a journalist "a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse?" That was the question asked by Janet Malcolm in her book The Journalist and the Murderer (1990). The journalist in question was Joe McGinniss, who has died aged 71 after suffering from prostate cancer.McGinniss had been one of the shining lights of the "new journalism" of the 1960s, but Malcolm was echoing the words of the judge in a civil case brought against him by Jeffrey MacDonald, the convicted murderer who had been the subject of McGinniss's bestselling 1983 book, Fatal Vision. The judge likened McGinniss to a "thief in the night" and a "con man". McGinniss's crime was to embed himself with McDonald's defence team, professing belief in his innocence, then write a book explaining how MacDonald was guilty.McGinniss's career had got under way through a similar confidence game and his work returned constantly to the differences between presentation and reality of those in public life. In 1968, while on a train to New York to interview the sportscaster Howard Cosell, McGinniss met an advertising executive who had landed the account for presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey, and boasted that "in six weeks we'll have him looking better than Abraham Lincoln". Intrigued, McGinniss sought access to the Humphrey campaign.After being... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2014-03-12 00:00:00 UTC ]

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Joe McGinniss obituary

Controversial writer and journalist known for Fatal Vision and The Selling of the PresidentIs a journalist "a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse?" That was the question asked by Janet Malcolm in her... Continue reading at The Guardian

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