Summary

Malcolm opens her narrative with an examination of the “morally indefensible” relationship between a journalist and his or her subject. She compares the realization of a subject upon the release of an article with the experience of the subject of the Milgram experiment. The subject of this experiment was asked to push a button that would send an electric shock to an individual every time he or she answered a test question incorrectly in order to see if this method would improve learning ability. The actual goal of the experiment was to see if a person caved to the pressure of authority and would inflict pain on another human being. Most subjects continued giving shocks although they knew the other person was in pain, and it was not until after the experiment they learned they were performing in situations comparable to those of...