PUBLISHING WATCH : Docu- Fakery

Standards for fact-checking in book publishing range from the extremely rigorous to the all but nonexistent. The range in newspaper and magazine publishing is at least as great, but book publishers, typically, are protected by a contract that holds them harmless should a book result in a lawsuit.

In June, 1986, Doubleday & Co., now a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, a German publishing conglomerate, published “The Underground Empire: Where Crime and Governments Embrace” by James Mills. The book, though acclaimed in Time and Newsweek and given five days of serious coverage on NBC’s Today show, was riddled with falsehoods, all offered in the service of an absurdly overblown central thesis that drug lords, in effect, ruled the world. Mills claimed that 33 allegedly sovereign states were under their control and that, in this country, foreign drug lords were able to force their will on the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The truth about Mills’ book first came to light in an October, 1986, Times expose by David Johnston. But the challenge did not stop there. Los Angeles attorney Barry Tarlow, one among many victims of Mills’ docufakery, chose to fight back and has now won. In an out-of-court agreement announced Wednesday, Mills and Doubleday agreed to pay what they admit was a substantial settlement and issued a statement reversing the book’s claim that Tarlow was implicated in wrongdoing. Tarlow has won a round not just for himself but, in our judgment, for all honest documentary publication.