Stephen Glass, like other journalist in his industry, wanted to get ahead and be that guy that everyone loved. He was young, working for The New Republic, a well-known magazine and was well respected by his colleagues. In the Journalism industry it is not easy to be noticed you have to continually prove yourself through amazing stories and portrayals of current events. Stephen Glass did just that, he told great stories and had great portrayals except none of them were an accurate depiction of what really happened. In fact most of his stories were completely fabricated. One of the main goal journalists is to give fair, accurate and unbiased depiction of events and keeping the public informed. Investigation, photography, print and recordings are all accurate ways portraying the truth. Journalism is the only profession protected by the first amendment, which says a lot about how important the role of a journalist is in American society. According to an American Journalism Review, published in 2000, by Mass Communications and Society, “Accuracy, fairness, sensationalism, bias” are all components of the problem, but the No. 1 issue is that “people distrust our motives,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which, with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, hopes to get journalists thinking about standards.”(Robertson p.20) Fabricating the truth cost Glass his career and his credibility with his readers, colleagues and editor. If he knew what the extent of his consequences would have been I don’t think Glass would have let his greed for greatness get to his head. When faced with the making the choice whether or not to plagiarize or fabricate a story I would recommend to someone not to do it. In the long run it will not be worth it. After watching the movie “Shattered Glass” it really gave me a whole insight on how much your reputation could be destroyed when committing an ethics crime. To my knowledge once a journalist is guilty of this crime they are never trusted to write another credible story again. A similar case happened with a woman named Janet Cooke wrote a story for The Washington Post entitled “Jimmy’s World” about an 8-year-old heroin addict. This story got her a Pulitzer Prize and recognition. “It was such a good story. She was such a talented writer. The article appeared in such a prestigious paper. It all fit together very nicely.” (Corrigan p.1) It turned out that the story was completely false, she ended up losing her award, job, credibility. I learned that it is better to have a true story that doesn’t get much praise then a false story that everyone loves because, at the end of the day someone will find out.
Robertson, Lori. American Journalism Review, Mar2001, Vol. 23 Issue 2, p20, 10p Journalism Educator;Corrigan Don Oct81, Vol. 36 Issue 3, p8-10, 3p