Primary Colors Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy

Critical Essay by Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy

SOURCE: Alderman, Ellen, and Caroline Kennedy. “Can a Journalists's Novel Be Libelous?” Columbia Journalism Review 36, no. 2 (July–August 1997): 55–57.

In the following essay, Alderman and Kennedy discuss whether Klein can be sued for libel for his fictional portrayals of prominent political figures in Primary Colors.

You have spent years as a journalist, chronicling events great and small, meeting fascinating, inspiring, and loathsome people, and filling reporters' notebooks with human drama more entertaining than anything you could dream up. So, you think, now it is time to turn those notebooks into a best-selling novel. You might not have the wild success of, say, Joe Klein with Primary Colors, but because it is fiction, at least you won't have to triple-check your facts or worry about defaming anyone, right? Well, maybe not. As Klein found out, writing fiction is no guarantee of immunity from a libel suit. In the latest...
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