Fiction and Lying for a Living

Let me start out by making one thing perfectly clear...  I am a fiction writer.  I don't 'lie for a living'. 

Never once have I tried to imply that the fiction I write is in any way the truth.  That's what liars do.  They try to convince you that what they're telling you is, in fact, the truth.  No fiction writer I know does that.  We write fiction and we proclaim loudly that this is fiction.  It's not reality.  That would be non-fiction.  Or journalism...

Wait.  Scratch that.  Actual journalism is about facts and reality.  You know, TRUTH.  Not sure what's going on with what they're calling journalism these days.  I'd call it fiction, but I don't want those people associated with my profession. 

Remember back when the so-called memoirs of a certain person caused a hullabaloo because it was revealed that his non-fiction had been mostly made up? 

Remember back when that news anchor got caught making shit up about his experiences and foisting them off as the truth?

Remember when news networks used to carry reports of those embarrassments?

Well, now it seems the news networks have become the very embarrassments they used to report on.  :sigh:

Anyway, fact is fact.  Truth is truth.  Reality is reality.  Nothing anyone says or does changes that.  "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away." - Philip K. Dick.  It also doesn't go away just because someone has tried to replace it with a homemade reality cobbled together out of whims and assertions and bullshit. 

Journalism and news - whether in written or verbal form - should stick to the facts and to truth.  Leave the fiction to the fiction writers, please. We have enough competition amongst ourselves, thank you very much.  And just as we novelists don't lie for a living, you shouldn't be lying for your living either.