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If a living person described in nonfiction is rich enough to pay for a lawsuit, their depiction was almost always edited to appease them, while poor people just have to deal with anything that is said about them. https://twitter.com/baym/status/1344102687747534850
The reason for this is that publishers can't afford to be taken to court all the time. It doesn't matter whether they win or lose. Only for very famous people (public figures) are the rules different, and even this has become less true.
This is topical since it's the reason Article 230 is so important to people like Donald Trump. Twitter users will happily defame rich and powerful people, and it's hard to effectively stop them; they're too numerous and have no money to take. If you can sue Twitter, it's easy.
Libel suits are regularly used to protect really serious criminals who have caused misery and even death on a massive scale. Serial rapists, fraudsters, corrupt politicians, even gangsters. Publishers often can't afford to publish the truth about rich and/or powerful people.
This does creep into histories and biographies; historians must often rely, to some degree, on writings which were edited to avoid the wrath of the powerful. Even when they have other primary sources (not always the case), their view of the subject is colored by that material.
So if you have a vague idea that powerful people are pretty gifted and decent—or anyway can't be totally stupid, dishonest, drug-addicted, and violent—while generally speaking the poor are more prone to vice and less capable, guess why.
