... Mr. Frey's contention that having 5 percent or so of his book in dispute was "comfortably within the realm of what's appropriate for a memoir" and the troubling insistence of his publishers and his cheerleader Oprah Winfrey that it really didn't matter if he'd taken liberties with the facts of his story underscore the waning importance people these days attach to objectivity and veracity.

Mr. Frey's searing memoir has sold more than 3.5 million copies in significant part due to Ms. Winfrey's warm endorsement. The Smoking Gun, a muckraking Web site, set off a firestorm when it reported — in a bulletin entitled "A Million Little Lies" — that significant parts of the story were made up.

In her phone call to "Larry King Live" — for which she later apologized on her own show — Ms. Winfrey argued that what was important was the larger truth of Mr. Frey's book.  

Ms. Winfrey, to her credit, changed her mind............. "I really feel duped," she later told Mr. Frey. "But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers."

Ms. Talese [Frey's Editor] insisted that "a memoir is different from an autobiography," and suggested that an author has greater leeway to play with the facts in memoirs.  ... But Ms. Winfrey made far more sense when she insisted that, simply put, stories have to be true if they are sold as memoirs.

Mr. Frey's dissembling is only the latest in a long line of literary scandals involving fiction being passed off as fact. The context is important because it makes clear that publishers should expect that writers will try to mislead them, and they should have procedures in place to guard against dishonest writing.

Frank Rich notes that It's when truthiness moves beyond the realm of entertainment that it's a potential peril.

Rich writes