I was just reading an old issue of National Geographic and came across a story about the Hadza people of Tanzania, one of the last groups of true hunter-gatherers left on earth. Before I started reading the article, I noticed the byline — Michael Finkel.
Finkel is a freelance journalist who was famously busted in 2001 for fabricating large parts of a story about a young worker on a cocoa plantation in the Ivory Coast. In 2007, Slate media critic Jack Shafer wrote about Finkel’s past in the context of his having written the July, 2007 National Geographic cover story. Shafer questions the judgement of the editors:
If murderers can be rehabilitated, surely one-time fabricators like Finkel should not be irredeemable. (The Times Magazine rechecked his other features and found nothing improper.) Obviously the Times can never employ Finkel again because doing so would make the paper look cavalier about accuracy. The circumstances of his deception, his statements to the press, and the account published in his book argue strongly against allowing Finkel back into the fold. While I can forgive Finkel personally and wish him no unhappiness, I bear him a grudge for the damage he’s done to his profession and for the reader trust he’s violated. I wouldn’t give him an assignment.
I first became aware of Finkel’s work through some stories he wrote while on assignment in Afghanistan after 9/11. One that he wrote, Naji’s Taliban Phase, really struck me at the time. When I read that Finkel made up the details in the Ivory Coast story, I very much felt burned. Later, the Times went back and checked into all of his other articles, and an editor’s note now appended to the article says that the story checks out with only one minor factual error. I don’t really believe it.
Here’s what makes me sad. The Hadza are fascinating, the article is really interesting, and there’s no disputing that Finkel is a gifted writer. However, this story is about his living with a remote tribe for two weeks. The Hadza are difficult to catch up with and there are only a few people in the world who can translate from the Hadza language to English. Parts of the story take place in situations where not even his interpreter is present. It may not be fair, but I doubt pretty much everything interesting or surprising that I read in the story.
Finkel has demonstrated his willingness to spice up his stories with fiction in the past in order to make them more entertaining to read, and National Geographic put him in a situation where his account is almost impossible to confirm. Assigning such a story to someone with Finkel’s past is irresponsible, and reflects poorly on the magazine.
At least now when people search for Michael Finkel or his article on the Hadza, there will be something out there that explains why they may not want to believe everything they read.
The false choice between career and relationships
Yesterday, David Brooks wrote a column on relationships and happiness that gave me a lot to think about yesterday. I was quite taken with it at first, but the more I thought about it, the less impressed I was. In it, he argues that a successful marriage trumps a successful career when it comes to the pursuit if happiness:
The question was, would Sandra Bullock have been better off with a happy marriage or her Oscar? But that’s really a stupid question, because clearly Sandra Bullock would have chosen the type of person to marry that she described in her acceptance speech rather than someone who pretended to be that type of person while cheating on her at every opportunity had she known better. To pretend that there was any kind of choice to make is silly.
I think the positive aspect of his column is that it serves to remind people that good relationships are a big part of being happy, and that the government should evaluate policy in terms of whether it encourages good relationships. (On that note, given that marriage is such a huge contributor to happiness, disallowing same-sex marriage seems even more inhumane than ever.) But I think that Brooks’ column sets up a false choice.
In some cases career advancement and personal relationships are in opposition, but in many cases they are not. Generally speaking, the best recipe for happiness is to have a fulfilling career and to have a fulfilling marriage. If one is unfulfilling, it tends to rub off on the other.
Every once in awhile it does come down to a tough choice between the two. Do you really want to take that job that is going to require you to travel 26 weeks a year? Is it worth taking a job that means you will often come home too late to have dinner with the family? More often than not, though, people make poor decisions when choosing between negative impulses and the goals they claim to have. And it’s those bad decisions that ruin their careers and their marriages.