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First of all, this headline is honestly cracking me up. 
Second of all, there is a strange dichotomy in publishing platform nonfiction—the authors are required to be autonomous experts, but also enough of a personality to make up the aforementioned platform.
Sometimes you get both—someone who has genuinely built a career on research and gained an audience over time. But even experts are human beings, and more often than not the expertise is secondary to the platform.
Books are often for entertainment, and I’m not at all opposed to putting out celebrity memoir or a juicy tell-all, or even letting a Jenner write YA, generally speaking. There is an audience for that, and I appreciate capitalizing on that audience from a business perspective.
But when our industry chooses to publish a Sarah H. Sanders, for example, it is, I guess, enough to file those books under entertainment. SHS and similar call themselves journalists/pundits, and openly peddle lies that we will turn around and print without a single fact-check.
How much more embarrassing is it for us that we are not taking responsibility for those we choose to publish who have built a career on legitimate journalism and historical commentary (which can still be flawed, ofc) that we choose to purchase, produce, and distribute?
We have disregarded a vested, demonstrated interest in the long-term effects of our choices in order to secure a buy-in from...people who give a fuck about Sarah Huckabee Sanders? People who care more about having their opinions affirmed than setting an appropriate record? Why?
It feels incredibly disingenuous to me every time a publisher washes their hands, Pilate-style, and pretends that have no responsibility or accountability to their decisions to publish inaccurate books. (This extends outside of editorial as well.)
