Joe McGinniss, 'Fatal Vision' Author, Dies at 71

Joe McGinniss, the author who reported on political campaigns and murder cases in the books 'The Selling of the President' and 'Fatal Vision,' died on Monday. He was 71.

His death was confirmed on his Facebook page, where he frequently posted updates about his treatment for terminal prostate cancer over the last year.

When Mr. McGinniss published 'The Selling of the President,' his famous account of Richard M. Nixon's television-centered campaign in 1969, he was only 26. The book went behind the scenes with President Nixon's consultants and became a model for political reporting.

His 1983 book 'Fatal Vision' focused on the murder trial of Jeffrey MacDonald, an Army doctor and a Green Beret accused of killing his pregnant wife and two daughters. Mr. McGinniss lived with Dr. MacDonald's defense team during the trial and eventually decided that the jury's guilty verdict was correct.

More recently, Mr. McGinniss made headlines in 2010 when, for his next book, he moved in next door to Sarah Palin and her family in Wasilla, Alaska. Mr. McGinniss said he was offended when the conservative TV host Glenn Beck suggested that he was a peeping Tom who wanted to peer into her daughters' bedrooms.

The book, 'The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin,' included sensational allegations about the family, including the claim that Ms. Palin had taken drugs when she was young.

In 2011, Mr. McGinniss told The New York Times that Ms. Palin had fulfilled the experiment in image-making he had seen more than 40 years ago.

'It has all become entertainment,' Mr. McGinniss said. 'In the 21st century, politics is just another branch of the entertainment industry.'

Mr. McGinniss wrote several other books, including one on the reality of life in Alaska, titled 'Going to Extremes,' published in 1980.

He made a name by diving deeply into each story, but he also received criticism for his reporting techniques. Dr. MacDonald sued Mr. McGinniss, saying that he had cooperated because he thought the book would portray him sympathetically. Dr. MacDonald received $325,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

The New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm, whose articles were published in the book 'The Journalist and the Murderer,' argued that Mr. McGinniss had morally compromised himself by pretending he thought Dr. MacDonald was innocent long after he believed him to be guilty.

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