Situational Definition
Stephen Glass was a manipulative person who lied to the public to maintain his reputation. He is a disgrace to journalism and hurt people close to him and people who have never even met him through his fabrications. One issue that is an intense ethical conflict is the fact that he fabricated and plagiarized in his pieces. Plagiarism is completely and totally illegal especially when you work for a respectable newspaper such as The Republic.
Another ethical issue found in the movie Shattered Glass is the fact that Glass did not even feel guilty for his actions and lying to his co-workers and close friends. He made these decisions to lie with a clear conscious.
Analysis
The ethical issues of plagiarism and not having a guilty conscious after lying repeatedly are two characteristics of a toxic and poisonous person. In the 60 minutes video we watched, Glass’s former co-worker, Leon Wieseltier, was disgusted by his unethical actions. He explained that everything that man says is a lie and he will never be associated with him again.
Glass decided to fabricate his papers because he cared so much about his reputation of him being the best writer in the office. In the article, How could this have happened, Katherine Eaves says, “The goals and functions of newspapers are to inform and entertain readers, to provide facts that allow the readers to choose for themselves how to feel about an issue.” Glass had the ability to rhetorically persuade an audience in believing the stories he made up.
In the movie, whenever there was a scene of the writers getting together and presenting what they found that week Glass always had some over the top story that blew the crowd away. His ideas were fantastic and would make great articles if they were true and honest. The ethical issue that Glass plagiarized makes him violate the ethical quality of honesty and makes people question his moral as a person.
The journalistic values include but are not limited to truth and accuracy, fairness and accountability. Glass failed as a journalist to the public by not living out these values. The reason he got away with it so easily is because Glass was a fact checker himself. In the article, Why they lie, Ivar Shapiro says, “‘Googling’ is not the same as rigorous fact-checking, and so far, few newspapers are routinely engaged in the latter.”(Rosen, 2004.) (top of 266) News papers need to be more devoted to the importance of fact checking so they do not get the few people like Stephen Glass who have no integrity.
Being associated with a person with low morals would be a hard situation especially because Glass made himself everyone’s best friend. It would be disheartening to lose a person you use to hold so close to your heart, however, if ever put in this situation it is better to distance yourself and encourage them to get help.
Conclusion
For the ethical issue plagiarism, this is an illegal practice of taking someone else’s work and claiming it as your own. In schools, there’s tons of plagiarism cases everyday. The most common practice I know of in schools is taking it to a student run ethical board. You present your case then they decide if it is understandable or not. I believe this is a fair way of dealing with a first ofence of plagiarism, however, in Glass’s case there were far too many fabricated pieces for forgiveness.
When assessing this situation in this paper I begin to understand how easily it is to lie to make yourself look a littler better. Glass was in no way in the right at all in this situation but when coming across it on a more minor scale it would be forgivable.
References
Eaves, K. L. (2007). How Could This Have Happened? A Rhetorical Criticism of the Apologia Employed by Newspapers After an Incident of Journalistic Fraud. Conference Papers — National Communication Association, 1.
Shapiro, I. (2006). Why They Lie: Probing the Explanations for Journalistic Cheating. Canadian Journal Of Communication, 31(1), 261-266.
’60 Minutes’ (CBS, Season 35, Episode 37). (2017, September 18). Retrieved September 18, 2017, from https://vimeo.com/30824692