Nobel prize winner blasts NY Times for publishing ‘gossip’

Famed Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, slammed The New York Times on Sunday for publishing what he called “slanderous and perfidious” gossip culled from an article published by The Daily Mail, reports Poynter.

In a letter to the editor headlined “Mario Vargas Llosa Responds,” the author called the Times to task for its Aug. 17 review of his new nonfiction book, “Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society” by author Joshua Cohen.

“I am flabbergasted to learn that this kind of gossip can work its way into a respectable publication such as the Book Review,” Vargas Llosa wrote.

Vargas Llosa’s objections stem from a passage at the end of the review (which has since been changed) that details an alleged relationship between the author and Isabel Preysler, a socialite and television host. Cohen wrote that Vargas Llosa had announced the budding relationship on his “official Twitter account” and sold the story of his romance “reportedly for 850,000 euros.”

Not so, says Vargas Llosa.

I have never had a Twitter account, and I have never posted and never will post anything on any Twitter account. I have never sold a photo or story to Hola! magazine or any other outlet in connection with any relationship or personal matter.

So where did that information come from? According to an editors’ note appended to the story Sunday, Cohen relied on a Daily Mail article for the information, although the revision-checking website NewsDiffs shows Cohen did not cite the Daily Mail as a source. The editor’s note says the information was not verified by Cohen or Times editors before it was published.

In reviewing this complaint, editors determined that the reviewer had based his account of these matters mostly on information from an article about Vargas Llosa in The Daily Mail, but neither the reviewer nor editors independently verified those statements. Using such information is at odds with The Times’s journalistic standards, and it should not have been included in the review.