Blog 2- Shattered Glass by Gabrielle Moore
The movie Shattered Glass gives you a look into one of the biggest news scandals in the world and opens our eyes to two major ethical issues, values and accountability. Shattered Glass is about a young reporter named Stephen Glass who worked at the New Republic; and, for three years was fabricating all his stories and sources.
The two ethical issues that can really hurt a journalist’s credibility are values and accountability. As a journalist, it is our responsibility to educate and inform our readers on a topic or event so they can make reasonable judgment about that topic or issue (Roger Hadley, 1986). We do this by giving them all the truthful information that we find and making sure that we are only reporting fact based items and leaving our opinions out of it. According to the Ethical Journalism Network, a sure sign of responsible journalism is the ability to hold ourselves accountable. Journalists are not elite untouchable people that never make mistakes, it just happens that theirs are put out on display for the whole world to see. However, when a journalist makes these mistakes, it’s the way they correct the error and their expression of regret that shows if they are holding themselves accountable for the mistake (Ethical Journalism Network,2015). The other really important things that journalists need to remember is the values that were instilled in them for their whole life. The Ethical Journalist Making Responsible Decisions In The Digital Age said that people will go against their values when they desire wealth, status, and happiness. Journalists will do this because they want to sell more newspapers, raise broadcasting ratings, or increase their website traffic (The Ethical Journalist,2016, p.19). Stephen Glass is a perfect example of a journalist breaking their moral values. All he cared about was the awards and making stories that had rich and vivid details that were too good to be true rather than writing stories that were true (Shapiro, I, 2006).
Overall, Stephen Glass opened the eyes of many journalists to reconsider what their values are and remind them to always think before they write their next article. This scandal also shows that journalists are not invisible; they need to own up to their mistakes and truly be accountable for all their action, miss wording, and wrongfully quoting facts.
References
Shapiro, I. (2006). Why They Lie: Probing the Explanations for Journalistic Cheating. Canadian Journal Of Communication, 31(1), 261-266.http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=9&sid=7010f84c-7160-4746-87a0-9435ed30cb39%40sessionmgr120
Five Principles of Journalism – Media Ethics.” Ethical Journalism Network, ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/who-we-are/5-principles-of-journalism
Foreman G. The ethical Journalist: making responsible decisions in the digital age. Hoboken: Wiley; 2016
Roger Hadley (1986) Television New Ethics: A Survey Of Television News Directors.Journal Of Mass Media Ethics
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=8&sid=e94d2d30-e2cc-418b-a2b8-c12dcb5768ad%40sessionmgr120