Unauthorized, but Not Untrue

Kitty Kelley discusses biography in the American Scholar.

From the piece...

Priced at $30, my book was too expensive to flourish in a sour economy, especially in the target audience of Oprah fans, who, demographics show, are low- and middle-income women with little disposable income. But there was more at play than economics. Even among Oprah fans there is a bit of Oprah fatigue, following 25 years of her appearing on the air five days a week. Some people feel they know all there is to know about their idol, and whatever else there may be to learn they will read in the weekly tabloids at the grocery store. Others want the myth and do not want to be disillusioned by an unauthorized biography. In today’s celebrity culture, that word unauthorized carries immense freight. It signals an independent appraisal that will reveal more than floss, and some people cannot accept their idols with flaws. Instead, they need the illusions they see on the screen or the fantasies they read. To show anything less makes them feel shortchanged, even conned.

Journalists are just as susceptible to the power of celebrity as the adoring housewives who watch Oprah. Lara Logan, CBS News chief foreign correspondent and a contributor to 60 Minutes, appeared a few months ago with Howard Kurtz on CNN’s Reliable Sources. She castigated Michael Hastings for his Rolling Stone article that led to the firing of General Stanley McChrystal. When Kurtz asked her if there is an “unspoken agreement that you’re not going to embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter,” Logan said, “Yes, absolutely. There is an element of trust.”

Hastings said that reporters like Logan do not report negative stories about their subjects in order to assure continued access. No reporter would admit to tilting a story toward favorable coverage to keep entrée, but they do, and that is one of the dirty little secrets of journalism today.

The kickback I got from many of the media mandarins who refused to talk with me, and who had themselves been subjects of unauthorized biographies, reflects the fear and loathing of the genre.

Still, I believe that the best way to tell a life story is from the outside looking in, and so I choose to write with my nose pressed against the window rather than kneel inside for spoon-feedings. Most of the great biographies are written about people who are dead, and thus the biographies are unauthorized. Championing the independent or unauthorized biography might sound like a high-minded defense for a low-level pursuit, but I do not relish living in a world where information is authorized, sanitized, and homogenized. I read banned books, I applaud whistleblowers, and I reject any suppression by church or state. To me, the unauthorized biography, which requires a combination of scholarly research and investigative reporting, is best directed at those figures, still alive and able to defend themselves, who exercise power over our lives. So I only pursue the kings (and queens) of the jungle.