Writer/journalist Malcolm Gladwell a couple years ago got up on a stage in New York City, at a get-together called The Moth, and regaled the audience with a story from his early years as a writer at the Washington Post.
The Moth is a not-for-profit outfit designed to recreate the romance and mythology around the spoken story. Sounds noble enough.
Gladwell’s story recounts a contest that he and another young journo had to place specific, yet ambiguous phrases within the texts of their articles, for kicks. Gladwell tells his yarn with his usual easy charm and self-effacing style. The guy’s a pro.
The live telling made it onto a March 2008 episode of the radio program This American Life on NPR. From then on, you’d have thought that he recited the Gettysburg Address without crediting Lincoln.
You see, despite The Moth’s proclamation that its stories can indeed be tall tales, NPR did not include a strong disclaimer in its broadcast and people began to investigate the story as though it were written on a tablet.
Jack Shafer in Slate wrote a 3-page expose “separating bunk from fact” in the story. In “The Fibbing Point,” (props for the name) Shafer takes a magnifying glass to every sentence Gladwell uttered on stage. Everything from the hiring standards at the Washington Post to the consideration of Sydney as the location for a 1992 international AIDS conference comes under scrutiny.
Evidently, Gladwell EMBELLISHED a number of facts in his story. The horror!
Citing that such Fourth Estate pillars as Page Six and Gawker were duped, Shafer says that this is necessary because when the story went from the stage of The Moth to NPR, it “changed the equation.” But does this change of venue really make Gladwell more responsible for the truthfulness of the elements of his story? Of course it doesn’t. What we’re talking about here is whether NPR had an obligation to repeat the full disclaimer, or not.
But Shafer seems to think that Gladwell had the responsibility all along, (“Not once does he interrupt himself to say, You shouldn’t really be taking this seriously“) and must show contrition for his actions.
Some people on Gladwell’s blog have indicated that the quality of the story is based on its being true. One commenter, olegna, writes “This anecdote is not as funny when you realize it’s not true, and after hearing the story be told it’s clear you want people to believe relevant points in the story to be true.”
Look, I enjoy looking up the facts from films that are “based on a true story,” as much as the next guy. We’ve all Googled “Henry Hill” and searched “Frank Lucas” in Wikipedia. It’s fun to see how Hollywood takes the messiness of real life and works it into a linear screenplay. Why is Gladwell held to a higher standard than Ron Howard, or the Coen brothers?
Point is, when you want to scrutinize a story, you’ve got to consider the context of its telling. If Gladwell had written his tale in the New Yorker, he would have a responsibility far greater than when he is on stage talking (unpaid) to a few enthusiasts.
If you’ve not already heard it, take a few minutes and listen to the audio stream linked above. It’s also downloadable off the Moth Podcast section of ITunes. Warning: some of the events of the narrative may have been embellished, altered, or tweaked in order to make the story … funny. I trust you’ll enjoy it anyway.
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