Janet Malcolm

Abstract

In the 1980s, Janet Malcolm was sued for libel for allegedly fabricating direct quotations in a profile she wrote for the New Yorker. The suit lasted nine years and generated a wealth of legal documents as well as articles in newspapers, magazines and trade journals. In this article, I draw on work on the sociology of science to analyze how representations of journalism constructed in and around the Malcolm case were used to defend and challenge old boundary lines separating ‘subjective storytelling’ from ‘objective reporting’, and to affirm journalism’s authority.