Nonfiction is harder to write than fiction. Nonfiction
writers often receive far less attention than fiction writers despite the
former’s more demanding constraints. A quick online search can prove it: The
first five writers to appear after searching "famous writers" are
Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and William
Shakespeare. Each of these writers is most widely recognized for their
fictional works.
Don’t be fooled. My claim is not an example of a credible
cause and effect relationship. After all, there’s no evidence to support it.
Although it's engaging and probably grabbed your attention, it's also
inaccurate. Nonfiction writers are constantly faced with this same situation:
sacrificing accuracy for the sake of popularity. Itiis hard to write nonfiction
because the narrative doesn't always occur in the most appealing way to
readers. On the other hand, fiction writers have complete control over their narratives,
choosing and changing any restrictions or constraints they want to place on
their writing. Narratives in fiction can occur exactly as the writer wants. The
prevailing narrative in a work of nonfiction very well may not occur in the
most convenient or appealing way. This is particularly relevant when we look
and journalism and current events reporting.
Journalists are caught in the predicament of accuracy,
responsible for both engaging their audiences while also maintaining credible
evidence, data, and facts. What emerges is a blurred line between opinions and
falsehoods, and it's most visible when writers try to speculate unknown
information.
Trump created the Fake News Awards to draw attention to
inaccurate news stories. The awarded authors and their pieces highlight the
thin line nonfiction writers have to walk. Take Paul Krugman's op-ed article in
the New York Times, the Fake News Awards’ first place winner. The central point
of Krugman's article was this: “If the question is when markets will recover, a
first-pass answer is never.” Although an opinion piece, many people took the
statement made by a Nobel Prize winner in economics as true. In Krugman’s case,
his speculation turned out to be completely wrong: financial markets reached
record highs within Trump's first year. That begs the question as to whether
journalism should be considered nonfiction writing. Maybe a new category of
writing could better clarify the lines between unbiased factual writing and
biased speculative writing.
Preconceptions are not accurate. Whether or not it's the
writer or audience’s responsibility to make this distinction remains
unanswered. When journalist venture into nonfiction book writing, the
underlying source of this question becomes apparent: the tradeoff between
accuracy and popularity.
Nonfiction books are often subject to controversial
inaccuracies, most often seen in quasi-scientific journalistic works. Malcolm
Gladwell is perhaps the most notable author whose work faces widespread
criticism as a result of inaccurate conclusions. In his book Outliers, Gladwell
asserts a “10,000 Hour Rule”, claiming that achieving mastery or expertise in
an activity requires 10,000 hours of practice. Yet, the authors of the study in
which Gladwell asserts his rule have stated that his interpretation was an
inaccurate depiction of their own data. In one of his more recent books, David
and Goliath, Gladwell cites a psychology experiment to prove his theory of
“desirable difficulties”, being certain serious challenges that are actually
advantageous and cause positive outcomes.
The experiment Gladwell cited was a study of forty Princeton
students tasked with solving math problems in easy-to-read or hard-to-read
fonts, in which those given harder fonts performed better. A conclusion of this
sort barely holds scientific merit or credibility with such lackluster and weak
sources. Gladwell, however, is not the only nonfiction author with inaccurate
assertions.
Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s renowned book
Freakonomics, which peaked at number two on the new york times’ nonfiction
best-sellers list, was heavily criticized upon release for claiming that the
legalization of abortion led to a fifty percent reduction in crime rates during
the 1990s. Two Federal Reserve bank economists published a paper exposing the
Freakonomics authors for the omitted variable bias, which led to their
inaccurate conclusion. With the variables accounted for, it turns out that
abortion actually led to an increase in the crime rates, the exact opposite of
what Dubner and Levitt had originally claimed.
The Economist stated of Freakonomics’ inaccuracies, “for
someone of Mr. Levitt's iconoclasm and ingenuity, technical ineptitude is a
much graver charge than moral turpitude. To be politically incorrect is one
thing; to be simply incorrect quite another." Even highly-regarded
economist and journalist authors are subject to nonfiction constraints. The
evidence and data told one narrative, but the authors chose inaccuracy in order
to tell a “better” narrative. The same question arises as to whether the works
similar to those of Gladwell, Levitt, and Dubner should be listed as
nonfiction. Gladwell supposes that his work “is not going to be as rigorous and
as carefully argued and complete as an academic work, because [it’s] popular
non-fiction”. Although aware of his works’ complicated status, Gladwell is
illogical to conclude that falsely-supported and inaccurate statements can be
the basis of nonfiction.
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