Oct 28, 2002 4 min read

The Internet is an enormous source of information on just about any subject you can imagine. The key word to remember is information. Some of it is accurate and factual. A lot of it isn’t. It’s the same situation with books, magazines, fliers you receive through the mail, and newspapers.

A mountain of information is available through all of these sources. It’s really up to the reader or Internet user to determine the accuracy or validity of that information.

In our free society, we are bombarded with news and opinion every day on 24-hour television news and talk shows. Trying to sort out the truth from fiction or exaggeration is not always easy.

Recently, I finished reading a book, “Dutch, A Memoir of Ronald Reagan,” by Edmund Morris, the official biographer for former President Ronald Reagan.

Since I was not aware of the controversy, which surrounded the book when it was published in 1999, I accepted what I read in the book as historical fact.

After I wrote a review of the book for this column, I heard from several readers who informed me that the book was part fiction, part fact.

Here’s what a New York Times reviewer said of the book: “Morris has produced a book that is anything but scholarly or substantial … He has produced a bizarre, irresponsible and monstrously self-absorbed book.”

“Even worse, this loony hodgepodge of fact and fiction is being sold not as a novel but as the only biography ever authorized by a sitting president.”

Reagan selected Morris as his official biographer in 1985. Morris insists that his information about Reagan in the book is accurate, but admits that entire chapters about his relationship with the former president are fantasy.

Reagan, when he was a lifeguard, never saved Morris from drowning in a river, as Morris says in the book. The book never makes any acknowledgement that fictional characters were created by the author.

The New York Times adds: “Readers have been cheated: under the guise of an authorized biography of Reagan we get a cloying, egocentric novel; instead of a revealing portrait of a president, we get a phony self-portrait of the president’s would-be Boswell, another self-absorbed Ted Baxter doggedly hogging the limelight.”

It took me a few weeks just to recover from the anger of being fooled by the book. The incident, however, pinpoints the crucial need for integrity and accuracy. If a book is part fiction, the reader needs to know. My advice: Don’t bother to read “Dutch.” It would be a huge waste of your time, and I apologize for misinforming you in the earlier column.

Sometimes people will produce a clipping from a magazine or a printout of an article from the Internet, using these hard copies as “proof” of their argument for or against an issue. Facts are sometimes difficult to find. Opinion flows like a river.

I received an e-mail recently from a reader concerned that a bill in Congress proposes to charge 5 cents on every delivered e-mail. This rumor has circulated far and wide on the Internet. It’s not true, but that doesn’t seem to slow down the spread of the report.

Sometimes the newspaper is criticized for printing information that is not based on fact. A closer examination of that issue can be revealing. Newspapers distribute information in their pages. Some of that information is opinion, which may or may not reflect true statements made by individuals, governments or agencies, and some of that information is based on facts.

With any newspaper, magazine, Internet Web page, TV talk show, e-mail or even gossip shared over a backyard fence, it’s up to the reader, listener and viewer to determine what they want to believe and that which they deem to be questionable or even untrue. A good example is trying to separate fact from fiction in political campaigns.

This is just another lesson in being wary and alert in this fast paced age of instantaneous worldwide communications.

Mike Ellis is the editor of the Herald-Standard. His e-mail address is mellis@heraldstandard.com.