| In 1984, Jeffrey Masson sued New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm for libel, claiming she misquoted and fabricated defamatory statements she attributed to him and placed in quotation marks. The charge struck a nerve in legal, journalistic, and academic circles---and thus began the 12-year epic journey of Masson v. New Yorker through the federal courts. Had a successful Freudian scholar actually called himself an "intellectual gigolo" and "the greatest analyst who ever lived"? Or had a respected writer for the New Yorker knowingly placed false, self-damning words in her subject's mouth? Writers, journalists, media institutions, psychoanalysts, and libel lawyers all waited to see how Masson's {dollar}10 million libel suit against Malcolm would finally play itself out in court. Many chose sides as they waited, evaluating and commenting on Malcolm's journalistic methods and ethics and the validity of Masson's claims in news stories and scholarly articles published across the years.; This dissertation examines the ethical, legal, and historical dimensions of the case. Although traditional, objective-style journalism and narrative journalism developed alongside one another in twentieth-century America, their differing standards had long been on a collision course---and the Masson case was part of the inevitable wreck. Exploring the wreckage provides a powerful means of investigating the cultural norms and historical circumstances that gave rise to these two journalistic traditions and their tensions, as well as the continuities and ruptures between First Amendment and democratic theories and the actual operation of the press, law, and democracy in twentieth century America. |
