A Million little lies

This past month a whirlwind of commotion stemmed from the James Frey scandal. Readers were angered that they had been lied to, Oprah was angered that she has been made a fool of in front of millions of televisions, and James Frey was jumping for joy as his books flew off the shelf and buckets of money flew into his pockets. As the scandal grew and grew, and Frey hit up all the daily talk shows, I was brewing. Is this really what people are mad about, that an author lied about his life in one memoir? As soon as the story hit the presses our media experts acted shocked by Frey’s untruthful nature. No one seemed to believe that an author, a bestselling author, would have the audacity to lie in his book. “He turned 3 hours of jail into 3 years!!.” Why was the media obsessed with the truthfulness of this author? His book had not caused a social revolution. It had not caused anyone to kill themselves and it most definitely did not find out the meaning of why we all here. Why were we obsessed?

My theory is that the media has a conscious, a pathetic whimpering weak conscious. Media outlets had finally realized the errors of their ways in the past years. They realized in the past years they told biased stories. They realized they shaped stories that would lead readers to connect 9-11 with Saddam Hussein. They realized they had downplayed when it was evident that our leaders had lied to our nation. Where was the media when the government lied about the war in Iraq? Where was the media hoopla for that? The James Frey story was the media’s chance to show that they indeed were committed to truthfulness in print. It was the media’s chance to show to the American public that they once again held the values of freedom of press and truthful reporting in high regard.