Fact checking

The shadow chancellor's new book has come under scrutiny for lifting passages of text from other sources without acknowledgment. Academic writers explore how this can happen

My book, The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, concerns the deaths of two people who have many living family members, the incarceration of a living man, and a protracted emotional and social trauma of enormous meaning to a great many real and living people in a region with enormous (rightful) distrust of media and journalists.  Read more

Recent weeks have seen a flurry of conversation about factchecking in the publishing industry. Two high-profile authors have had their work's accuracy questioned by their sources, leading to something of a reckoning in the book world. Many people are asking how these inaccuracies could have happened, but those familiar with the publishing process say they aren't surprised.

Readers might think nonfiction books are the most reliable media sources there are. But accuracy scandals haven't reformed an industry that faces no big repercussions for errors.