After watching the movie Shattered Glass, it’s hard to believe that Steve Glass would have the chance to fabricate his 27 stories by using the hole in the system of fact checking in journalism. There are two things that is worth noting about Steve Glass. First, he used his intelligence in a wrong way. He got achievements that other people wished to have by fabricating interesting and entertaining stories. Second, after his unethical behavior began to be exposed in front of other people, his showed lots of unwillingness to admit his mistakes. If he stopped himself in the first place, it wouldn’t have cost such a big price for him and the New Republic to repair their fault.
People do plagiarism for many reasons. Some of them are for convenience because they are lazy; some of them, like Steve Glass, are looking for more entertaining values in their story. There is no doubt that Steve Glass was a very clever person, and he had a comprehensive and deep understanding of the news production industries. He knew how to cater the public interests and also knew the weak points in the news system. Nowadays, people like interesting stories more than routine political event stories. Glass caught this change, and it seems much easier for him to make up a story, compared to actually discovering and following one in the real world.
In the movie, Glass said about fact checking, “For some of the stories, the only source for fact checking is the notes provided by the reporters.” We can see that his 27 stories are not about huge events, but rather some small interesting stories about local individuals and their unconventional personal lives, such as the teenager hacker in the “Hack Haven” article. He feels happy about the readers liked his stories, and ever since then, he just couldn’t stop.
Clearly, we can see he has passion of working for the New Republic, and he likes his identity as a journalist. However, Steve Glass didn’t understand the function of being a journalist and its responsibility to people and to the industry. The story telling is not the only component of news reporting. Most importantly, the news media is a powerful guiding tool for the public. That’s why the credibility of the story matters. Everything in the news should be solid. Shabarni Basu mentioned in Social Responsibility: the Obligation of Mass Media, “Social media greatly mould the thinking process of readers, viewers and listeners, thereby contributing in building of public opinion. Hence, social responsibility should dictate the arms of media while functioning” (Basu, 2011). Journalism isn’t only about storytelling, but the most importantly is about showing facts and truth to the public.
The second thing I wanted to mention is the courage of admitting fault and starting to tell the truth. There is a great chance that a writer will have some ethical issues, no matter whether they are intended or not. The right thing to do is before the situation becomes worse, the writer should be able to admit their fault and correct their mistake. In the later part of the movie, Steve Glass showed his unwillingness to admit his fault. When Chuck, the editor, questioned him, Steve kept insisting, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” People wanted to give Steve Glass a second chance by suspending him for two years, but he still didn’t telling the truth, so he lost his job instead.
In another similar case, Jayson Blair, a talented writer for the New York Times, had fabricated 38 stories and was asked to resign over his last story about a missing soldier who died in Iraq. He fabricated the story and he had actually never been to Iraq. Similar with Steve Glass, Blair had errors that appeared in the stories, which made his editors suspicious. Even though he has to make correction for the errors that appears in his stories, but he never stops fabricating.
The reason for them to consistently do this might be that them don’t understand the importance of credibility of any of the social media, no matter whether it’s for newspaper or television. Journalist must earn their credibility by being honest all the time. In an article related to Jayson Blair’s case, the author mentioned that, “Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth; its first loyalty is to citizens; and its essence is a discipline of verification” (Jones Patterson& Urbanski, 2006). Low credibility can bring huge disasters to a news producer.
When the citizen values their production, the credibility is always the first priority. Once the credibility went down, it was much harder to get it repaired. In the article, “Jayson Blair, The New York Times, and Paradigm Repair”, “When Jayson Blair was found to fabricate his work, the New York Times jointly totaled nearly 14,000 words and included both a detailed description of every then-known error in Blair’s work and an in-depth account of his activities and the Times’s editorial processes” (Hindman, 2005). The unethical behavior brings the newspaper a lot of incredibility. The newspaper company has to do a lot of work to repair and rebuild their images.
In conclusion, in order to avoid plagiarism happen in ourselves, also to achieve respect and trust from other people, the only way for journalist is to stay honest and tell the truth. Steve Glass, by acting friendly and hardworking person, gained a lot of trust from his co-workers and his leaders. However, after what he did had been found out, he lost all his credibility to his people and to the news industry.
Reference:
Basu, S. (2011). SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: THE OBLIGATION OF MASS MEDIA. Global Media Journal: Indian Edition, 1-6.
Hindman, E. (2005). Jayson Blair, The New York Times, and Paradigm Repair. Journal Of Communication, 55(2), 225-241.
Jones Patterson, M., & Urbanski, S. (2006). WHAT JAYSON BLAIR AND JANET COOKE SAY ABOUT THE PRESS AND THE EROSION OF PUBLIC TRUST1. Journalism Studies, 7(6), 828-850.