Who gets the last word?

Recently, while multitasking and cutting up veggies for stew, I watched "The Devil Wears Prada" on TV. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...] Despite a seriously mixed bag of reviews, the book was a huge best seller and Weisberger put out a sequel last year. Cutting critical comments aside, the public seems to love stories where insiders reveal the "truth" about others: the rich, the famous, the powerful. And so I'm left to wonder if perhaps the real power rests in the hands and minds of talented writers, those individuals who can frame issues and portray characters as they see fit, and perhaps not as these things really are in the world. Tell all books, even when heavily fictionalized, are oh so tempting. The public seems to gobble up the words of nannies, maids, mistresses, assistants and other insiders...provided those words are cleverly crafted by a good writer. So who has the real power? Should more writers be looking for juicy secrets instead of story arcs?