Story Teller or Liar?

People who think that journalist Ryszard Kapuściński was a liar are missing the point, writes one Guardian blogger, who says there is no sharp frontier between literature and reporting. Kapuściński reportedly kept two notebooks when he was out on a job, one of which he used for his job as an agency news reporter, the other of which was used for his calling as a writer to record thoughts and musings. “To mix the two notebooks up is to miss the point of him. Artur Domoslawski’s book, from what is reported about it, suggests that Kapuściński was a dishonest reporter who made up stories about events he hadn’t seen, and invented quotes. This is to confuse his journalism with his books. Almost all journalists, except for a handful of saints, do on occasion sharpen up quotes or slightly shift around times and places to heighten effect. Perhaps they should not, but they – we – do. A few of us go beyond the unwritten rules of what is tolerable, and send our papers eyewitness accounts of events we never saw because we were somewhere else. That, in the profession’s general view, is right off the reservation – not on.”