Freedom of speech and press – the Mortensen case
The first amendment to the Constitution of the U.S. states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press; or….” Previously, perhaps in several posts, I underlined the point that this proves the Constitution is an evolving, living document that was written to adapt to new situations that would appear in our young democracy, something some sectors of our society and even some obstinate Supreme Court judges deny: This is the first amendment—it wasn’t in the original document.
Today I will focus on those freedoms that deal with publishing—speech and press. While Sixty Minutes (CBS) has suffered the same blows as all network news programs and is in a downward spiral, I still watched the segment last Sunday night about Greg Mortensen. I remember when, several years back now, a colleague at work recommended the book Three Cups of Tea, a heart-warming portrayal of a person trying to do some good in this world. I’ll confess that my first knew-jerk reaction was cynicism. Someone who’s rich enough to go halfway round the world to climb mountains wants to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan? I thought, “Either this guy is Paul on the road to Damascus, celebrating a personal epiphany, or he’s a con artist.”
Over time, and with the force of his book’s durability on best-seller lists behind him, Steve the doubting Thomas became convinced. Mr. Mortensen even founded the Central Asian Institute to build those schools, I told myself. But now, with the CBS expose, it turns out that the CAI spends more on financing Mr. Mortensen’s book tours than building the schools. In fact, many of the ones that were built stand empty and useless. Am I disillusioned? You betcha! Here’s a person that played on my emotions and made me a believer in a cause. He suckered me in, and, if the number of people who bought his book is any indication, millions of others were scammed too. Not so much monetarily, mind you—unless they made a huge donation to CAI—but emotionally raped.
The question before us is: Did Greg Mortensen have the right, via the first amendment, to mount this campaign that plays on our sympathies to make mountains of cool cash? If not, who bears the blame? The second question is easier to answer than the first and the answer to the second is independent of the first. The publisher of Mortensen’s books does not bear the blame, given the rules of engagement between publisher and author that operate today. You could argue that the publisher (or editors) should have checked the facts more carefully, but given the thousands of non-fiction memoir-like books submitted to them every year, can we really expect a publisher to maintain a fact-checking band of private detectives whose job it is to weed out con artists and lawyers?
No, if there is blame to be had, Mr. Mortensen deserves it. However, the first question is more complicated, especially since money is involved. In fact, the answer is all about financial and personal harm. The first amendment protects Mr. Mortensen’s free speech, which even involves lying. People lie all the time, from Uncle Joe’s 100% augmentation of the fish he caught the other day, to Mr. Obama’s unfulfilled campaign promises of 2008. In the first case, we know Uncle Joe is just doing what most fishermen do, and we shrug it off. In the second case, most of us shrug it off too, because we all know most politicians are not trustworthy individuals. In fact, there is no harm, because we are cynical. There are no surprises—we expect the lies.
However, over and beyond the moral outrage I have on being told lies and the embarrassment of being gullible enough to believe them, I think Mr. Mortensen’s printed lies did financial and personal harm. The financial harm was done to the people who believed in him and gave money to the CAI. How can you not want to build schools for poor kids? Ignoring the fact that our own country doesn’t do a good job of this, in Third World countries the need is even greater. Of course, therein lies the personal harm—it was perpetrated against those poor kids, the kids that really need the schools.
There should be a law against abuses of free speech and press like the one Mr. Mortensen allegedly perpetrated (the “allegedly” comes from the fact that Mr. Mortensen and the CAI have gone on the defensive in the national press). For now, let’s just say that Sixty Minutes convinced me and I’m now outraged. Should we allow these abuses? I don’t write non-fiction (I’m not counting my books on quantum mechanics or the computer revolution, written in Spanish years ago). I have no stake in this, personally. Perhaps if we made grifting a non-fiction genre, I’d feel better.
Note that this case is different than the James Frey case of a few years back. By promoting his book A Million Little Pieces, Oprah catapulted Mr. Frey’s book into the best-seller list. It sold almost two million copies before Oprah and the public found out that they were scammed. I suppose there was financial loss here too, since every reader paid good money for the book (the Tea book can also be charged with this crime) and also since Oprah’s book reviewing segments certainly lost respect. At the very least, I bet she now spends money to hire people to check an author’s facts. This certainly represents new job opportunities for private investigators!
Yet Frey wasn’t promoting any charities—or maybe he was promoting more government intervention in helping addicts. I don’t remember the details, but I don’t think there was an institute involved. Frey was just interested in selling his books, so he made his memoirs a little more zippy. In general, I have no problem compressing boring time lines in memoirs or eliminating nonessential facts when this facilitates the reading. A good editor is going to do this anyway. Even “creating facts” is ethical—the memoir just becomes historical fiction. If Frey had admitted to doing that, what can we say? Nothing—no harm would be done (well, maybe to Frey—he wouldn’t have sold as many books!).
Some people complain about thrillers that mix fact and fiction. Frederick Forsyth was famous for this, but we all tend to do it. For Forsyth it was natural to do so—he had a background in journalism. I do it in my own thrillers. This technique makes the story seem more realistic—the events seem more possible. It’s more fun for the reader when he or she can ask, “Could this really happen?” This is a far cry from lying and saying something really happened when it didn’t. To help avoid any misperception, I always set my stories in the future. The problem is that the near-term future (for example, in The Midas Bomb) becomes the present and then the past over the life of the book, but readers are wonderfully accepting of this.
The bottom line: a book that claims to be non-fiction and really isn’t, is unethical. However, the author should be protected by the free speech and free press amendment, unless that deception does personal or financial damage to someone. Then there should be laws, similar to libel laws, that protect the people that are affected. I’m no legal eagle, but I don’t think such laws exist. (Readers can correct me by commenting to this post if I’m wrong.) Nevertheless, even with the laws, is there a lawyer out there who will represent those poor school kids in Pakistan and Afghanistan pro bono? Maybe….
