Book publishers are worse than journalists!

The New York Times reports that James Frey's publisher has issued a statement about its author's fabricated and deceitful memoir:

"Recent accusations against him notwithstanding, the power of the overall reading experience is such that the book remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story for millions of readers."

Wrong. So wrong. The power of Frey's book stemmed entirely from its supposed truth. Without truth, it's a story about a fictional thug who goes into rehab and rejects 12-step therapy. That might be an interesting story, but not an inspiring or redemptive one -- and, I suspect, not one that would sell 3.5 million copies.

Here's the difference between book publishers and publishers of journalism. Had Frey worked for a newspaper, something like this would have happened in the wake of The Smoking Gun article:

• Frey would have been put on paid leave.
• The paper would launch its own investigation of his work.
• Frey would be required to co-operate, and if he didn't, he'd be fired.
• There'd be some kind of editor's note published, acknowledging the accusations against Frey and announcing the paper's investigation.
  
• The paper, no doubt, would quickly find that The Smoking Gun's report is accurate.
• The paper would publish a lengthy correction of the story, or perhaps, given the extent of the fabrications, just retract the thing altogether. Frey would be fired.
• The paper would publish a lengthy story detailing its investigation of its own writer and analyzing what went wrong. Editors might resign or be fired.
  
• The larger journalism community would be a-twitter, with independent analysis, investigation and criticism.

But in the book publishing world? We get Doubleday's spokesidiot telling The Times, "This is not a matter we deem necessary for us to investigate."

In other words: "We got your money already, so screw you."

Update (a couple days late): Lying is okay with Oprah.

Double update: Scary. Michelle Malkin and I agree on something.

Triple-dog update: Seth Mnookin, who says he was a legit junkie, tears apart Frey and his crappy book. I'm starting to wonder why I liked it in the first place. The excerpts Mnookin cites are pretty terrible writing.