The movie Shattered Glass is about a young reporter Stephen Glass who fabricated most of his stories while working at the New Republic. Glass who is known for being a serial liar committed many unethical acts while being a journalist. The two main issues that I have with Glass is fabrication and the fact that he continuously lied on his stories, and his deception of his colleagues, and the lies he used to cover up his other lies.
According to Shaffer (2017) lying is the often the lazy, imaginative way to get to the story. Glass reportedly fabricated 27 of his 41 articles, so more than half of his stories were lies. I believe that his laziness to complete stories and get the quotes and information the right way led to his downfall.
The first issue is his fabrication and lying about his sources and quotes in his stories. According to Wu and Lambert (2016) “Ethical practice is essential to every profession’s sustainability in society. Media professionals, particularly, are subject to scrutiny of any ethical violation because of their pivotal role in providing information for political and other critical decisions for societal members.”Glass said himself in the interview that we watched in class that it all started with one little lie in one of his stories and it just continued to grow. I remember him saying that he would say that if he had this one quote that the story would just be perfect so he would just make that quote up.
I believe that he did this because he was addicted to the praise that he got from writing these stories. The laughs that he got from his colleagues in the room when he was pitching his stories, I think that it went to his head and it created a certain level of expectation for him to produce a certain level of story and he did not want to let others down. Time constraints could have also been another cause, with him taking classes in law school he could have felt under pressure to produce stories, but after seeing how many that he fabricated I do not think this was the problem.
The second problem that I had with glass was how deceptive he was. Even after he was caught for fabricating a story for the first time his colleagues believed that he was seriously sorry and that it was just one mistake. And the fact that he was crying making others believe that he was showing true remorse for what he did.
Not only did he get caught but once he got caught, the lengths that he went to to cover his tracks or at least to try and cover his tracks were absurd. From making a fake website to having his brother act as a source for one of his stories is just ridiculous to think a professional journalist would do such things.
According to Ward (2011) their decision as a university to create an ethics center was prompted by the concern about the future quality of journalism in the interactive media world. Watching the film it showed why it is so important to hire journalist that have good character. Like we have talked about in class a person’s character is so important because their character is their core beliefs and what they will fall back on. Glass obviously had no character whatsoever. The continues lies that he told not only to the editor that he was not very fond of but also to the first editor in the movie. It just showed that he had no respect for the art of journalism and the integrity that all journalist should have.
When facing issues such as trying to develop the perfect story and needing better quotes, I believe that starting your stories earlier and allowing yourself to have multiple chances for interviews and time to create your dream story would be a good solution. I know that sometimes a story does not come out how you would like it to, but at that point you could just make the package shorter and not as long as you would have liked so that your are not jeopardizing quality for a longer story.
With the issue of character, I believe that you should have lines that you will not cross, and fabricating a story should definitely be atop of the list for any journalist. Journalist have an obligation to the public to tell the truth because of the platform that they are provided with. So if glass would have had believes and boundaries already established he would have been fine.
References:
Ward, S. A. (2011). CENTER FOR JOURNALISM ETHICS, SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON. Journalism Studies, 12(3), 392-398. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2010.534910
Wu, H. D., & Lambert, C. A. (2016). Impediments to Journalistic Ethics: How Taiwan’s Media Market Obstructs News Professional Practice. Journal Of Media Ethics, 31(1), 35-50. doi:10.1080/23736992.2015.1117391
Share, Jack. “Is It Ever OK for Journalists to Lie?” Politico Magazine, 30 Nov. 2017, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/30/fourth-estate-project-veritas-james-okeefe-215991.