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In 1968, when Roger Ailes was not the all-powerful maestro of Fox News but just a whip-smart 20-something trying to make Richard Nixon look good in staged television town halls, he told a young journalist named Joe McGinniss, “This is the beginning of a whole new concept. This is it. This is the way they’ll be elected forevermore. The next guys up will have to be performers.” Indeed, Nixon’s presidential campaign set the standard of scripted salesmanship and calculated image-making for all contests to come — and to it we owe much of the stilted version of pseudo-reality that defines...

Too bad to put in a life's work and have something creepy that you did be the #1 thing many or most people attach to your name when they see that you died.

NEW YORK (AP) - Joe McGinniss, the adventurous and news-making author and reporter who skewered the marketing of Richard Nixon in “The Selling of the President 1968” and tracked his personal journey from sympathizer to scourge of convicted killer Jeffrey MacDonald in the blockbuster “Fatal Vision,” died Monday at age 71.

Joe McGinniss, the author of "Fatal Vision," "Final Vision" and a 2011 Sarah Palin biography, announced that he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer last May. "I was diagnosed in May with advanced, metastatic prostate cancer," he wrote Wednesday on his Facebook page. "There is no cure, so sooner or later it's terminal." --snip-- Most recently, McGinniss profiled Sarah Palin in "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin," which portrayed the former GOP vice presidential candidate in a less than positive manner. After renting a house neighboring Palin's Alaskan home to carry out his research, he emerged with claims...

This is the case that refuses to die. Forty-two years ago, the wife and daughters of a handsome young Green Beret doctor, Jeffrey MacDonald, were stabbed and bludgeoned to death at the family home in military housing at Ft. Bragg, N.C. MacDonald, now 68, is serving three life sentences for the crime, which spawned a bestselling book, "Fatal Vision," a hit TV miniseries and decades of speculation over whether MacDonald is a sadistic killer or a victim of injustice. In federal court Monday in Wilmington, N.C., the case will play out once again with all its lurid details — drug-crazed...

So, how was the public convinced that MacDonald was guilty despite all of these “reasonable doubts”? Enter my old neighbor Joe McGinniss. MacDonald signed a contract giving McGinniss exclusive rights to his life story, and so McGinniss was given unprecedented access to the defense team – living with them, working with them, eating with them. But when the guilty verdict came down, McGinniss did a one-eighty on them. Apparently, falsely convicted men don’t make for good books. McGinniss decided it was a better story to agree with the jury. MacDonald wasn’t a sympathetic figure. He did himself no favors with...

Ever since the National Enquirer leaked salacious details from The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin before the book was published, author Joe McGinniss has been embroiled in controversy. First, the tabloid revealed his book’s more lurid accusations against Ms. Palin: An alleged affair with her husband’s business partner, a pre-marital sexual encounter with former NBA player Glen Rice and snorting cocaine. Then The New York Times said Mr. McGinniss used his summer living next door to the Palins in Alaska to “chase caustic, unsubstantiated gossip.”

WASHINGTON - Author Joe McGinniss says some of the people quoted by name in his controversial book on Sarah Palin have been threatened since its release last week."A couple of them have already gotten some blowback," McGinniss said Thursday in a telephone interview from Toronto, where he was in town promoting "The Rogue: Searching For The Real Sarah Palin.""One guy was even told he'd better watch his back because it's going to be a long winter; he might not see the end of it because he has such a big mouth." After months spent fending off similar threats when he...

COMMENTARY | Sarah Palin is threatening to sue Crown Publishing Group (CPG), publishers of Joe McGinniss's book titled "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin." Palin is threatening to sue due to what her lawyer calls "series of lies and rumors presented as fact" and for "knowingly publishing false statements."

Sarah Palin may have threatened to sue the publisher and author of a scathing book about her life, but her rise to fame and public prominence since her failed 2008 vice presidential bid could make her case difficult to prove, according to attorneys who deal with similar cases. Palin’s attorney sent a letter to Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, Monday evening, informing them Palin may sue the publishing house and author of “The Rogue,” Joe McGinniss, “for knowingly publishing false statements” in the book released last week. But attorneys who handle defamation and libel cases involving public figures...

However, the seriousness of Tiemessen's letter and the potential legal vulnerability of Random House have been mocked and derided by those suffering from PDS. For more than three years, Palin's enemies have become accustomed to seeing bloggers and tabloids spread libelous assertions and obscene speculation about the former Alaska governor with no apparent repercussions and thus included such nonsense as David Magee's column today: But here's the problem with suing McGinnis and the publisher: Palin would have to prove that the allegations in the book are all lies if she proceeded with a lawsuit. She's a public figure -- and it's hard...

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) Crown Publishers spokesman Stuart Applebaum says the company is confident the reporting in Joe McGinniss' book is "solid, reliable, and well-substantiated." Applebaum says Crown stands behind McGinniss and the book, "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin."

Hard sales numbers will not be available for a week but the rankings on Amazon and Barnes & Noble provide a good indication of consumer interest. The Rogue is ranked in the fifties on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Deer in the Headlights is hovering in the seven hundreds on Amazon and in the two hundreds on Barnes & Noble.

Sleazy book author, Joe McGinniss and his publisher are currently being sued by Sarah Palin's lawyer. But this is not the first lawsuit against McGinniss. Jeffrey MacDonald, the former Army Green Beret and physician convicted of the bloody murders of his wife and two young daughters, won a $325,000 settlement Monday from the author (Joe McGinnis) who portrayed him as a killer in the book "Fatal Vision."

This headline at ABC News is misleading: Sarah Palin Threatens to Sue ‘Rogue’ Book Publisher It is misleading, because there is no “threat” in the letter. Rather, as Governor Palin’s lawyer John Tiemessen clearly states, the legal prerequisite for a defamation suit under Alaska law: “[S]ince both your company, and the author, clearly knew the statements were false, admitted they had no basis in fact or reality, but decided to publish in order to harm Governor Palin’s family, you and Mr. McGinniss have defamed the Palins. This letter shall serve as written notice . . . that a claim may...

“The final work that was published contains most of the stories that Mr. McGinniss complains were nothing more than ‘tawdry gossip’ that amounted to the wishful fantasies of disturbed individuals,” Tiemessen writes. “Since both your company, and the author, clearly knew the statements were false, admitted they had no basis in fact or reality, but decided to publish in order to harm Governor Palin’s family, you and Mr. McGinniss have defamed the Palins.”

Attorneys representing former Alaska governor Sarah Palin have written to Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, serving notice of possible litigation for defamation in connection with Joe McGinniss’s recent anti-Palin biography, and warning the company not to delete or destroy relevant documents. The letter (see below) reads, in part: Enclosed is an e-mail by your author Joe McGinniss. In this e-mail, Mr. McGinniss admits that your own lawyers instructed him that “nothing I can cite other than my own reporting rises above the level of tawdry gossip.”….Indeed, Mr. McGinniss admits that the allegations are false unless he can find...

Attorneys representing former Alaska governor Sarah Palin have written to Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, serving notice of possible litigation for defamation in connection with Joe McGinniss’s recent anti-Palin biography, and warning the company not to delete or destroy relevant documents.

Sarah Palin’s family attorney John Tiemessen has written a letter to Maya Mavjee, the publisher of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, that Palin may sue her, the company, and the book’s author Joe McGinniss “for knowingly publishing false statements” in his book released last week, “The Rogue,” ABC News has learned.READ THE ENTIRE LETTER HEREThe book was widely panned by critics for using unnamed sources to criticize Palin and her family. Tiemessen cites an email they have access to in which McGinniss writes that attorneys from Crown Publishing told him “nothing I can cite other than my...

Joe McGinniss complained to lefty blog Firedoglake yesterday that almost everyone is canceling interviews in which he was to have discussed his book, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin: Terry Gross [of NPR's Fresh Air] has declined to have me on her show. As have all other NPR shows. My fifteen seconds as part of a report on All Things Considered is all I get from NPR. I’m told they are scared of losing more federal funding if right wing Congresspeople complain that they are “promoting” my book. FYI, both Morning Joe and Keith Olbermann had me booked for...