The newsmedia’s historical tendency to, at times, play fast and loose with fact versus falsehood—an issue of concern to culture jammers and one that some sociopolitical satirists and media activists use the tactic of the media hoax to expose—is documented in the articles in this file.

File contents include: H.L. Mencken on “the synthesis”—fabrication—“of news”;
NYT book review of “the falsification of photographs” in Stalin’s Russia, together with related article, “Altering Reality: Potential for Evil, the Power to Sell”;
NYT book review about Bruno Bettelheim’s self-invention;
NYT story, “Kennedy Quotes in New Book Are Invented”;
NYT article on the extent to which Ruth Orkin’s famous photo “of a girl running a gantlet of Italian men” was partly staged;
NYT review and news article addressing fictionalized “facts” in Reagan memoir;
“Magazine Dismisses Writer Accused of Hoax” (NYT), about Stephen Glass scandal exposed by fellow journalist Adam Penenberg, and another NYT article on same; NYT essay, “Writers of nonfiction can get all the facts right—and still be wrong”;
NYT, “Photos That Lie—And Tell the Truth”;
NYT, “Of course, pictures lie. Now, with digital technology there’s no limit to the lie”;
NYT, “Laying Bare the Uncertain Underside of Truth: A show of contemporary works seeks to illustrate the deceptive interplay of fact and fiction as artists remake reality”;
NYT, “On CBS News, Some of What You See Isn’t There”;
NYT article about the fabrications in the famous YA anti-drug novel, “Go Ask Alice”;
Joyce Carol Oates op-ed in the NYT about authors who stretch the truth;
Two New York Observer articles on Sebastian Junger’s bestseller The Perfect Storm, claiming it’s “awash in errors”;
New Republic article on “Black soldiers and Buchenwald,” claiming the PBS documentary Liberators contains exaggerations.