A new biography of the Polish war correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski alleges that he frequently forged details, invented images and claimed to have witnessed events that he didn’t, in fact, witness. Gerald Posner resigned from the Daily Beast after admitting that he had lifted sentences from a Miami Herald editorial, a Miami Herald blog, Texas Lawyer magazine and a health journalism blog; Posner blamed the “warp speed of the net” and his “master electronic files system.” The publisher of Charles Pellegrino’s new book, “The Last Train to Hiroshima,” withdrew it from publication following allegations that Pellegrino had created characters and extensively used a source whose status as witness to the bombing of Hiroshima was fabricated. A review of John D’Agata’s “About a Mountain” criticized him for compressing the timeline of some of the events in the book — which he acknowledges doing in the afterword.
more from David Shields at the LAT here.