Oprah Winfrey slams James 'Million Little Lies' Frey

Oprah Winfrey confronted James Frey about his memoir of drug and alcohol addiction, A Million Little Pieces, telling him that she felt "duped" by the book that she helped launch onto the bestseller lists.

"I have been in television since I was 19 years old, and I have never been in this position," she said at the outset of the program. "To everyone who has challenged me on" the subject of the book's veracity, she later admitted, "you are absolutely right."

A Million Little Pieces hit stores in 2003 and enjoyed only moderate sales, then became the second bestselling title of last year, after Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, once Winfrey touted it as her book club pick in September reports People Magazine

The high of the book's incredible success came to a crashing end on Jan. 8, however, when the Smoking Gun Web site published a report about Frey's accounts, saying that the author embellished, and even invented, some of his material

Winfrey began by apologizing to viewers for a telephone call she made to CNN's "Larry King Live" show on January 11, while King was interviewing Frey about the controversy. In the call Winfrey said that even though the facts were being questioned, the book "still resonates with me" and called the controversy "much ado about nothing."

"I regret that phone call," she told her viewers on Thursday. "I made a mistake and I left the impression that the truth does not matter and I am deeply sorry about that. That is not what I believe."

Sitting with Frey in side-by-side easy chairs, Winfrey quizzed the author point-by-point about his book that described his drug-and-alcohol addiction and the people hurt by it.

"All the way through the book I altered details about every one of the characters," Frey said "Every one of the characters was altered," including himself.

And even while Frey admitted altering information that he presented as facts, he maintained his book is a memoir.

"I don't think it's a novel. I still think it's a memoir," he said. "I don't feel like I conned you. I still think the book is about drug addiction and alcoholism and no one is disputing that I was a drug addict and an alcoholic, and it's about the battle to overcome that."

Among the facts he admitted to embellishing: he was jailed for only a few hours, not 87 days; and each character in the book wasn't wholly represented.

"Every one of the people in the book existed. I altered things about all of them," he said.

"And you altered things about yourself," Winfrey said.

She pressed: "Why would you lie about the time you spent in jail?"

"I think part of what happened with a number of the things in the book, is when you go through an experience like the one I went through you develop different coping mechanisms. I think one of the coping mechanisms I developed was this image of myself that was greater than what I was," he said.

Asked if The Smoking Gun Web site which first questioned the book had accurately characterized the discrepancies, Frey said "I think most of what they wrote was pretty accurate," adding they did "a good job."

As for Frey, he's hoping to learn from the whole ordeal.

"I feel like I came here and (have) been honest with you, and essentially admitted to lying. It's not an easy thing to do in front of an audience full of people and a lot of others watching on TV," he told Winfrey.

"If I come out of this with anything, it's being a better person and learning from my mistakes and making sure I don't repeat them."

By Fabien Montique posted time [ 3:02 AM] (5)