The New Yorker vs. Masson

Posted below is a review of the legal brief of the case of The New Yorker vs. Masson in which Janet Malcolm was exposed for fabricating quotes for a story. It shows deception at its worse and most unnecessary.

After being dismissed from his project management job at the Sigmund Freud Archives, Jeffery Masson participated in a series of interviews with New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm about his activities at the archives. Malcolm quoted Masson at length about various topics using actual quotation marks to surround the body of text attributed to Masson himself. Masson found fault with six particular statements and brought this to Malcolm’s attention. Further complicating the matter were Malcolm’s missing handwritten notes, which supposedly contained the information used to create the direct quotes. Malcolm also had more than 40 hours of recorded conversation between herself and Masson.

Masson filed a libel lawsuit against Malcolm in 1984 alleging that she had fabricated quotes and that these quotes were libelous. After review, the Supreme Court eventually ruled 7-2 that Malcolm had fabricated quotes but that the quotes were not libelous. They argued that enough evidence was found in the tape recordings to give foundation to the quotes Malcolm attributed to Masson.

An interesting point of argument surrounded Malcolm’s quoting Masson that he called himself and “intellectual gigolo.” This was supposedly part of a conversation Masson had with Freud archives associates Dr. Kurt Eissler and Dr. Anna Freud about future plans for the Freud home and archives. Nowhere in the tape recordings does the term “intellectual gigolo” appear.

Malcolm also quoted Masson as saying that he had plans for “sex, women, fun” at Freud’s home at Maresfield Gardens. Malcolm attributed to Masson the claims that he would turn the house into a place of “sex, women, fun” and it would be like “the change in the Wizard of Oz, from black-and-white into color.” These “quotes” were derived, supposedly, from actual recorded quotes of Masson saying that he had ideas for “big parties” at the Freud home and again, no taped evidence of the direct words “sex, women, fun” were found.

The Court based its decision about fabricated quotes on the notion that using actual quotation marks in any reputable publication would lead the reader to believe that anything found inside the quotations was an actual reproduction of words spoken. However, since Masson was a public figure this alone was not sufficient in claiming libel. Malcolm escaped further action because her most exciting “quotes” found at least some basis in the taped conversation. The Court held that despite the misjudgment on Malcolm’s part, no evidence of libel against a public official was present.

This information is pertinent to my research because despite her proven deception of readers by fabricating quotes, Malcolm was not held to any punishment. According to the Supreme Court, this type of deception does not warrant any action and conceivably is an acceptable form of journalism.