0.cached.png
By Jonathan Darman
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Oprah Winfrey was in no mood for applause. As she walked onto the Chicago set of her talk show last Thursday, she was greeted with a thunderous, almost giddy ovation. "OK, everybody sit down," she said curtly and went quickly to her work. Looking into the camera, she confessed her sins. She had championed the author James Frey and "A Million Little Pieces," his searing memoir of addiction. She had stood by him, even as broad fabrications in his text came to light. She'd made a mistake in doing so. She was sorry.
And royally pissed off. During a break in taping, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, a guest on the program that day, watched Oprah from a few feet away. "She looked genuinely depressed," he told NEWSWEEK, "and loaded for bear."
Her anger was understandable. After all, her kingdom was at stake. In its 20 years on the air, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" has operated with a simple credo: to thine own self be true. The formula has made Oprah her billions. ("I think the show's been successful," she told NEWSWEEK last fall, "because I'm always aiming for the truth.") It's also changed the way Americans live. Every time a politician lets his lip quiver or a cable anchor "emotes" on TV, they nod to the cult of confession that Oprah helped create. So when she stuck adamantly by Frey, the fabricator, she seemed to have lost touch with her public. Worse, she seemed to have lost touch with her inner Oprah.
Read More on News
Last Thursday, she found it. She fried Frey. She asked him to account for a passage in "Little Pieces" in which the author receives a novocaine-free root canal. He sweated, admitting he'd "struggled with the idea of it." Oprah interrupted, disgusted. "No, the lie of it... It's not an idea, James, that's a lie." Before long, order was restored: the villain had been unmasked, and the queen of talk TV reclaimed her throne, turning even her critics into fawning supplicants. "It was a master class in bravery," her close friend Diane Sawyer told NEWSWEEK. "She reminded everyone of the... power of telling the truth."
Still unclear, though, is what took her so long. Two years before Oprah selected "Little Pieces" for her book club, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran an investigation questioning the accuracy of the book. And eight days after Oprah announced the selection last September, a counselor from Hazelden, a Minnesota-based rehab center where Frey reportedly spent time, approached Oprah's producers with concerns about the accuracy of the text. Still, Oprah embraced it. Immediately after earning the book club's seal of approval, sales soared.
In early January, the investigative Web site The Smoking Gun published a lengthy expose of Frey's fakery. The case was compelling: he had not spent three months in prison as he claimed in the book, only a few hours in jail on small-time violations. Nor could he provide the 400 pages of documents he claimed backed up his account of life in rehab.
But Oprah stood by him. She shocked the nation when she ardently defended him on "Larry King Live," saying that "the underlying message" of his story "still resonate[d]" with her. Media professionals, used to Oprah's golden touch, couldn't fathom her mistake. "Everyone was talking about it," says Howard Rubenstein, a veteran New York PR man and damage-control guru. "There was not one person that thought she handled it artfully."
But in private, Oprah began having doubts of her own. After a series of conversations with Doubleday, the Random House division that published "Little Pieces," her producers concluded that Frey had been misleading them for months. By Jan. 19, Oprah had decided she had to go on the air and set the record straight. This would be no ordinary show: plans were made to broadcast live from Chicago, and staffers kept the lineup under tight wraps. Most guests, including Nan Talese, Frey's publisher at Doubleday, weren't even asked to appear on the program until Tuesday of last week, two days before it aired. Guests were flown in Wednesday night. Cohen, who'd written a column taking Oprah to task, was invited to appear, along with another critic, Frank Rich of The New York Times. Cohen said he had no clue Oprah would denounce her "Larry King" comments until the cameras started rolling.
Frey, who was unavailable for comment, wilted under Oprah's attack. Stuck in a no man's land between defending and denouncing his actions, he seemed to shrink onstage as Oprah and her guests piled on. Rubenstein says Frey could help himself by giving $100,000 of profits to an Oprah-selected charity as a start and would probably advise "an even more dramatic gesture." (Frey now claims to have given 15 percent of his proceeds to treatment centers all along, but The Smoking Gun hasn't weighed in yet.) Some publishing officials predicted a swift drop in sales for "Little Pieces" and his second book, "My Friend Leonard," after the Oprah appearance. But a day after the show, both books continued to sell briskly at Barnes & Noble, Borders and Amazon. Maybe all publicity is good publicity, or maybe Frey helped himself toward the end of the broadcast by sounding a redemptive note. ("If I come out of this experience with anything," he told Oprah, "it's being a better person and learning from my mistakes.")
The greatest image-rehab challenge may lie with Frey's publishers. Cohen ran into Talese and a Random House entourage before the "Oprah" broadcast on an elevator at the Omni Chicago Hotel. Talese told him she had no idea what Frey was going to say on the show. But at Oprah's studios, Talese and Frey were spirited off to a green room separate from other guests. During the taping, they sat together on a central couch between Oprah and a lineup of critics, looking like co-conspirators in the dock. Talese sounded more like a rapturous reader than someone responsible for publishing lies. In the soft accent peculiar to Upper East Side socialites, she offered meekly, "You can't stop people from making up stories. We learn by stories."
Colleagues at other Random House divisions expressed surprise when Talese stayed on vacation in Bermuda in the early days of the scandal. Some wondered why she didn't point the finger at the editors who actually birthed the book. After all, Frey's acquiring editor, Sean McDonald, had left Doubleday in 2003--well before Oprah's endorsement--taking the author with him to Penguin's Riverhead, where he published "My Friend Leonard." (Frey recently signed a contract for two more books.) McDonald and Talese did not respond to requests for comment. "This truly has been a shifting situation," said a Doubleday spokesman. "We have tried to adjust." While the show was still on the air in New York, Doubleday released a statement saying "we bear a responsibility for what we publish," and apologizing "to the reading public for any unintentional confusion." New editions of "Little Pieces" will contain publisher's and author's notes acknowledging embellishments.
Other editors worry about the fallout. As David Letterman and Jonathan Franzen can attest, Oprah sometimes holds grudges, and some Random House editors worry that she'll spurn the publishing house in future book-club selections. After the lights went down, Oprah said goodbye to Talese with a warm embrace. Publishers, who owe so much to Oprah, are hoping she'll remember her show's second credo: learn how to forgive.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines