BOB GARFIELD: A new poll conducted by the American Journalism Review and the First Amendment Center found that 61 percent of Americans agree that, quote, "the falsifying or making up of stories in the American news media is a widespread problem." That perception may have its roots in the widely-reported malfeasance of people like Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley and Stephen Glass, but we think the problem is rarely caused by conscious lying. It's usually caused by carelessness. There's a joke among journalists that some stories are too good to check; some are too hard to check, but they have to be checked anyway. What follows are cautionary tales for both consumers and creators of media not to believe everything you read --or even see.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The first involves book fraud -- the now-discredited "true story" of a young Jordanian woman murdered by her father because she dared to date a Christian. Norma Khouri's account of her best friend's so-called honor killing was exposed as a hoax in the Sydney Morning Herald late last month. So what's wrong with Khouri's story? Well, among other things, she can't prove she lived in Jordan during the time specified in the book. The Herald says she's lived most of her life in Chicago. Khouri claims there are thousands of honor killings each year. Amnesty International recorded only 15 cases in Jordan in 2003. Meanwhile, her publishers, Simon & Schuster in the U.S. and Random House in the U.K., sift through the evidence she sent to back her story, and her sequel is set for release in November. Malcolm Knox is the Herald's literary editor, and he joins me on the line from down under. Welcome to the show.

MALCOLM KNOX: Hello, Brooke.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So you're the man who wrote the expose: literary editor turned gumshoe. [LAUGHTER] What sent you sniffing after Norma Khouri?

MALCOLM KNOX: The concerns were initially raised inside Jordan, where the book was being held up for ridicule, because it was clearly exaggerating and falsifying facts about honor killings, which really do exist, and women's activists were concerned about this book undermining their cause. It was published in January, 2003 which, as we know, was a time when a lot of people were prepared to believe the worst of Arab Muslim men, and this was a book that tapped into that feeling.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what is the smoking gun in your case against Khouri?

MALCOLM KNOX: Well, really the smoking gun emerged when I visited Chicago last month, and I met members of her family, and they identified her from photographs that I showed them, and I was able to identify her in photographs that they showed me of her growing up in Chicago. I also had quite a lot of documentary evidence such as motor vehicle ownership, real estate transactions and so on.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now you'd have to say, wouldn't you, that Simon & Schuster did a pretty crappy job of fact-checking?

MALCOLM KNOX: They were prevented from really checking on her, because she said people's lives were at risk in Jordan if they went and checked on her bone fides there. And, of course, they didn't know her real name in the USA. Probably where the publishers fell down was these concerns were first raised late in 2003, and all the publishers did was, they went to Norma, and they said, "is this true or not;" she said "my story's true," and that was the end of it for the publishers. So I, I think they did a crappy job at that point.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: That's a touching display of faith in one's author.

MALCOLM KNOX: [LAUGHS] Well, she was a very lucrative property for them. I, I have a good deal of sympathy for the publishers, because if they were checking this kind of story as thoroughly as, say, I did -- they'd be doing nothing else. But she was a very, very clever customer. She knew what she was doing, and I think - you know, they were simply tricked in this case.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And, as you say, the story carries a lot of political freight. It shows an ugly slice of life in an Islamic family; a culture that would sanction honor killings. So now that it seems that her book is wrong, it's not just a literary dustup; it's a political bombshell.

MALCOLM KNOX: Well, it is, and Norma Khouri did become something of a poster girl for columnists of the right who wanted to amplify her story into the general atmosphere of dehumanization of Arab Muslim men.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How often do you think frauds in the form of true stories are foisted on an innocent public?

MALCOLM KNOX: [LAUGHS] I'd love to know. But I can say one thing, and that's that the incentive to do so is greater now in the publishing business than it has ever been before, because of the rise of non-fiction memoir as the hot genre within publishing at the moment.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What do you think the impact is over time of books being exposed as frauds?

MALCOLM KNOX: You know, I, I don't know what the impact will be, because as we discussed before, if publishers really checked their authors rigorously, they might find that the whole business of publishing non-fiction books becomes less than financially viable. So, I suspect there are going to be a lot of scratched heads and a lot of hand-wringing in the short term, but I am a little bit skeptical of how much publishers will do in the future to prevent this happening.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: All right. Thank you very much.

MALCOLM KNOX: Thanks, Brooke.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Malcolm Knox is the literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald.