Belinda Charles: Blog 2 – “Shattered Glass”
Stephen Glass, “The Pinocchio of Print Journalism.” (Rys, 2003) was a writer for The New Republic, he was praised for his work and everybody looked forward to hearing a new story from him. He loved the attention and he continuously provided stories based on lies. In journalism there is a code of ethics and rules that journalists are suppose to follow and one of the rules is honesty.
During his time with the magazine he published forty-one pieces and more than half of them were based on lies. In the 60 minutes interview with Glass he described it like a snowball effect, he began to fabricate his stories little by little then as time went on before he knew it his whole story was fabricated. The ethical issue here was the lack of integrity and that fact that he betrayed the principal of trust.
“I said to myself what I said every time, ‘You must stop.’ but I didn’t I loved the electricity, I loved going to story conference meetings and telling people what my story was going to be and seeing them in front of me, excited, I wanted every story to be a home run,” Glass stated in a 60 minutes interview. (Shapiro,2006) He clearly had a problem and he knew what he was doing. His lack of honesty caused The New Republic to lose its creditability. He lied to his audience as well as his co-workers and that’s something you do not do in the world of journalism.
How was he able to fabricate a numerous amount of stories one after the other without getting caught? How did he get passed the fact checkers? Is the question I kept asking myself. The truth was Glass didn’t think he would ever get caught. “He gamed the system. He’d often submit stories late to the fact checkers so they would be pressed for time.” (Dowd, 1998) Glass stated in the interview we watched in class that he use to be a fact checker. He knew how to work around the fact checkers so he wouldn’t get caught. Glass knew exactly what he was doing and he knew how to slide right pass them. The fact checkers and his co- workers also played an important role because they trusted his word and didn’t think he would make up stories so they never proceeded to actually call his sources.
Stephan Glass was a brilliant man in my eyes. He was able to do what we would call “the impossible” in a journalist’s career. Not only did he fool his co-workers, he fooled the whole world into believing his stories. I personally think Charles lane made the right decision in firing him, but I do think he deserves another chance. Its obvious journalism is not for him but the fact that he can’t get a job and was denied to work at certain law firms is wrong. What Stephan Glass did was wrong and he knows it, I think he suffered enough. He deserves another chance he is human and people make mistakes.
I felt like Glass had many opportunities to tell the truth before Lane fired him. Lane gave him numerous chances and was trying to give him the benefit of doubt. I believe that Stephan Glass wanted to be the best, so that’s why he made up stories. If I were in his predicament I would have told the truth, I wouldn’t have took Charles Lane to Bethesda. As a journalism major I learned to always tell the truth and to not fabricate even a little bit because that’s how it all started with Glass.
Dowd, A. (1998). THE GREAT PRETENDER. Columbia Journalism Review, 37(2), 14-15
Shapiro, I. (2006). Why They Lie: Probing the Explanations for Journalistic Cheating. Canadian Journal Of Communication, 31(1), 261-266.