“If you want truth tracked to where it is hidden, call a journalist; theirs is an honorable mission. But leave to novelists the country of Maybe in the land of What If, where all the animals are shadow puppets, and the rivers divide into countless streams that flow to a bottomless sea.”
Tales of the Marvelous 
Novelists do have much more leeway with the truth, but in today’s world, I’d say journalists do, too. The line is more blurred than it used to be.
Love this!