Liars Always Lie
Steven Glass, a young new journalist, made a name for himself by writing colorful and intriguing stories for The New Republic. When working in journalism, the job is to serve the needs of others instead of your own personal needs. It is expected when reading a story to have the facts and events told as the truth. Stephen Glass struggled with this concept when he chose to inaccurately report twenty-seven of his news stories, over half of all of the stories he wrote for The New Republic during the three years he worked for the magazine.
As a journalist, Stephen Glass should have taken a responsibility for the accuracy of his stories, but instead he committed one of the biggest ethical dilemmas through the fabrication of his stories. Instead of verifying information before releasing his stories, Glass created his own sources, events, and quotations from his very own imagination. The second ethical dilemma that Stephen Glass ran into during his time at The New Republic was how he dealt with the issue after he was caught in the act of falsely reporting a story.
One of the main reasons Glass made the decisions that caused his two ethical dilemmas, causing the end of his career in journalism, was his desperation for notoriety. Glass didn’t want to be a regular reporter that went unnoticed and in order to keep that from happening he felt the need to spruce up his stories to gain readers’ interest. Another reason for Glass cheating the system was due to the fact the pressure of needing to produce more newsworthy stories in order to keep his position at the magazine. According to Ivor Shapiro, “A distorted culture within the newspaper […] suggests that lying and stealing are epidemic, inevitable, and well rewarded throughout U.S. society,” (Shapiro, 2006, p. 264). Stephen Glass realized that by fabricating his stories he would be rewarded with more readers and thus gaining more notoriety and success.
The second ethical dilemma faced by Glass was his continuation of the lie once his editor Chuck Lane caught him. As a journalist it is his duty to respond quickly to questions about accuracy and to acknowledge the mistakes he made and to correct them promptly, but Glass did the opposite by continuously lying and making up details to prove his fake story was in fact real. Robert Lane stated, “By the time we realize that lies trap us, we may have made our own and other lives more confusing, and left ourselves few choices,” (Scott, 2004, p. 189). When Glass realized that he was caught in the act of lying he knew he was not only putting himself at risk, but also the reputation of The New Republic. Although the situation had no chance of ending in a positive light for Stephen Glass and The New Republic, the situation would have been handled better if Glass had acted quickly and come out with the truth right away.
One of the biggest issues with pathological liars, like Stephen Glass, is that once they start lying they can not stop because they get so wrapped up in the story they can’t get out of it. The only way to solve the ethical dilemmas faced by Stephen Glass is to let him go, which is exactly what Chuck Lane did. As an editor, you need to be able to trust the journalists that work for you, and Glass eliminated all trust when he chose to fabricate his stories. Glass did not deserve a second chance because he didn’t make an honest mistake; he made a choice. He knew exactly what he was doing when he decided to fabricate his story and he knew he was going against the ethics of journalism. To keep this situation from occurring again in the future, the ethics of journalism needs to continue to be taught, which will allow young journalists to be successful in the field.
Works Cited:
Scott, R. I. (2004). POLITICS, ADVERTISING, AND EXCUSES: Why Do We Lie?. ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 61(2), 187-195.
Shapiro, I. (2006). Why They Lie: Probing the Explantions for Journalistic Cheating. Canadian Journal Of Communications. 31(1), 261-266.