Vanity Fair defended fact-checking process that led to publication of error-ridden Klein excerpt

Written by Jamison Foser

Published

Amid growing controversy over Edward Klein's error-filled attack book on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), The Truth About Hillary (Sentinel, June 2005), a Vanity Fair editor defended the magazine's excerpt of Klein's book, claiming it was “carefully fact-checked.” According to Salon.com:

The Moynihan chapter was excerpted in Vanity Fair, and Wayne Lawson, who has edited Klein since he started at the magazine, also backed up Klein, pointing out that “unlike book publishing, everything that we print is very carefully fact-checked and legally vetted.” Lawson, who has edited pieces by Klein on Wen Ho Lee and Etan Patz, described his writer as “incredibly professional, a very solid reporter who always comes in with lots and lots and lots of notes meticulously presented.”

Media Matters for America has detailed several errors and glaring omissions in the Vanity Fair excerpt of Klein's book, including:

  • Klein falsely claimed that Clinton “suddenly turned up a long-lost” Jewish relative in response to furor over her controversial embrace of Suha Arafat. In fact, the Suha Arafat incident came months after news of Clinton's Jewish relative -- a fact that even a careless fact-check should have easily caught.
  • Klein claimed that during Clinton's Senate campaign, she underwent a stark change from “left-wing ... radical bomb thrower” to a “newly minted ... kinder, gentler, family oriented candidate who championed such issues as children's mental health.” In fact, Clinton has “championed” children's mental health for decades, as a fact-check should have quickly revealed; in 1985, for example, she began a successful effort to raise money for and build a “mental health agency for emotionally troubled children,” according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
  • Klein repeated the tale of Clinton and the Yankees hat, writing that after her claim to have always been a Yankees fan, she “looked more like an out-of-touch carpetbagger than ever.” But Clinton had, in fact, always been a Yankees fan.

If the excerpt that appeared in Vanity Fair was “carefully fact-checked,” one shudders to think what the result of a cursory fact-check would have been.