The movie Shattered Glass exposes a number of ethical issues that journalists may be confronted with throughout their career. During Stephen Glass’ time at The New Republic he fabricated more than half the stories he wrote and made up countless lies in an attempt to further his career and please his peers. In the increasingly competitive information age Stephen Glass needed a way to distinguish himself from the others; he needed a way to get the story that no one else could.
Glass’ fabrication was rampant, fueled by the excitement that of writing such great stories that everyone loved. One could probably say that his extreme fear of failure and rejection ultimately led to his inevitable failure. A quote from his 60 minutes interview, “I loved the electricity, I loved going to story conference meetings and telling people what my story was going to be and seeing the in front of me, excited.”(1). Glass couldn’t stop once he had first started because his stories were so fantastic and full of excitement that he would never be able to come across actual stories that could compare. He didn’t want to be the young writer that started off as a promising young star and then slowly tapered off eventually becoming just an average writer for an average publication; he had no choice but to continue on.
Glass broke the two biggest rules of ethical journalism that we talked about today during lecture: never lie to your audience and never lie to your colleagues. As a member of a well trusted publication it is expected that the journalists there will be truthful because of their already established credibility. Glass ruined his credibility with his colleagues and his credibility within the journalism industry and even the credibility of The New Republic.
The only result for the actions of Stephen Glass was to terminate his employment at The New Republic. While I understand the temptations of success and the ease of fabricating or plagiarizing a story to gain success quickly like Stephen Glass did, there must be some restraint and an evaluation of ethics and morality before taking an action. A higher level of caution also must be taken now that media exists in a digital age where information can be accessed around the world by millions of people. What really happened to Stephen Glass was that he ended up disappointing the people that he wished so greatly to please.(2)
- McNair, B. (2009). Trust Me, I’m a Journalist: Shattered Glass and the Crisis of Trust in Liberal Journalism. Retrieved February 5, 2013, from Ebscohost. http://web.ebscohost.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=87716afa-a78a-4b6c-92d8-cf94ef538e2c%40sessionmgr13&vid=10&hid=10
- Dowd, A. R. (1998, July). The Great Pretender. In Ebscohost. Retrieved February 5, 2013, from Ebscohost.