Knopf announced last Tuesday that it had signed a book deal with recently discharged Private Jessica Lynch concerning her rescue from an Iraqi medical facility, with the book to be written by recently discharged New York Times writer Rick Bragg. A Publishers Weekly report by Charlotte Abbott says, "Called I'm a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story and set for publication on Veteran's Day, November 11, it has become one of the fall's most anticipated books almost overnight." But as Abbott points out, the publisher will also have to deal with "lingering questions" about Lynch's rescue — subsequent reports showed she was under little threat and her wounds were perhaps exaggerated — and "Bragg's reputation in the wake of his resignation from the Times on May 28" for having filed reports lifted largely from the work of an assistant. Says Knopf publicity v.p. Paul Bogaards, "People in the wider world don't care."
Regarding Bragg's recent troubles: "In bylining a story that he did not witness, and writing vivid descriptions of things he did not see, Bragg comes perilously close to the techniques of Jayson Blair," says Jack Shafer in Slate.
Rick Bragg couldn't write the "vivid descriptions of things he did not see" in Showtime's "DC 9/11" because that job was already taken, not because the things he purports to describe existed.
What propagandists who call themselves journalists write cannot even disparagingly be called "fiction" — it's just deception, pure and simple. But, as we're constantly reminded, "People in the wider world don't care."
