From film “Shattered Glass”, Stephen Glass, the name of the character in this film, is always a word when I think about some ethical journalism questions. He did a really good job in covering many news from very unique aspects and achieved his success in the former part of the film. However, he made the worst decision in his career to fabricate most of his stories, 27 of the 41 articles he wrote for The New Republic were fabricated. He was fired at last, but he is a symbol of deception in all of his life.
The two main issues I realized of Stephen Glass are fabrication and loyalties. It’s obvious to see how terrible for a journalist to fabricate, to tell lies rather than truths. Not only the journalist who fabricates will lose his credibility, but also he will fail in his whole career forever, it’s a dirty spot in his life that cannot be removed. The another issue is about loyalties. If the first issue is about Glass’s external behavior, the second issue is about his own internal decision about whether choosing loyalties. The most important thing for Glass is to stand up for success, not for being loyal to the public, the job, and his responsibility.
To analysis them in details based on my two issues, first, the reason for Glass to do is he was too eager to get success so that he abandoned lots of basic principles as a journalist. Also the environment he worked in was too competitive. He realized only by making up stories could he gain praise and get more famous. He lacked a high sense of responsibility for his readers, which we can also say he didn’t choose right loyalties. I remembered a quote from out class note that being sure your decision not to abandon your loyalties. That’s the key for Glass’s case. Though the competitive working environment he was in and a high expectation others gave for him, he still needed to know what’s his loyalty should be. In the article “Public journalism: Balancing the Scales”: “It moves beyond the limited mission of ‘telling the news’ to a broader mission of helping public life go well…” (Stepp, 1996, P1). Glass limited himself to a narrow space of keeping telling news no matter the “news” was true or fake, no matter how he got “resources”, no matter how unsure he was about the truth of every story.
According to “How to prevent fake news in scholastic media”: “Of all shortcomings, fabrication is the most egregious. It occurs when journalists manufacture any information they know to be untrue. Sometimes it is blatant, such as when a journalist needs a juicy quote so the reporter concocts a bogus news source with a likely sounding name.” (Mark Grabowski, 2017). How ugly fabrication is described. Glass made his mistake so terribly that he refused to admit his fabrication strongly, also when he made up the article of Junkt Micronics, he even used the fake website and the asked his brother to pretend as the executive of Junkt Micronics. To be honest, I was so shocked when I knew how he fabricated a story. He is really smart, but he didn’t use his talent into a right place. Why did he spend too much time of making up stories rather than making efforts to get more resources to get the truth to tell? I appreciate his passion in telling stories, but I do question why he never was aware of never fabricating or never respecting his job being a journalist? Also, what makes me feel so bad is at the end of the film, he wrote his novel about his own story of fabrication. I think being a novelist is a best job for him, but he has to realize something and reflects himself deeply from his experience of fabrication.
If when I face challenges like Glass faced, the first solution, also the only solution for me it to admit my mistakes directly though I may be fired or had to quit my career. I think Glass didn’t realize how serious and terrible making up stories would be, and later he was famous of his fake stories, he was at a high stage among his colleagues, he cannot admit or he would lose all his self-esteem.
My thinking about his film is we journalists cannot do the same thing 100% as Glass did . It’s not only wrong for us to do it, but also we need to know it’s not worthwhile to do it. If you lose your reputation, it’s not what can be regained and fixed again. You will be likely to live under your bad reputation in your whole life. That sounds really horrible. The only solutions for avoid fabrication and not having loyalties to journalism, getting aware of any small ethical problem and stop to do at the first day as a journalist. If you’ve already done kind of things, be brave to admit and apologize as early as possible, that will save your career to a large extent. Think journalism sacred and paramount, try your best to be a good journalist with a high sense of responsibility and ethical education.
Reference
- Stepp, C. S. (1996). Public journalism: Balancing the Scales. American Journalism Review, 18(4), 38.
- Grabowski M. HOW TO PREVENT FAKE NEWS IN SCHOLASTIC MEDIA. Communication: Journalism Education Today [serial online]. Summer2017 2017;50(4):3-5. Available from: Communication & Mass Media Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed February 14, 2018.