Shattered Glass a movie created on the life of Stephen Glass’s occupation as a journalist. Glass worked as a writer for the magazine company The New Republic. Glass’s job ended once his editor came to the assumption that he had falsely made-up at least 27 of the articles he wrote for the magazine. A main issue that is critical when considering ethical messages in journalism is fabrication and deception.
The two main issues that bring me intense ethical messages would be Fabrication and Deception. I also would relate deception with confidentiality and anonymity which is evidence collected from research participants, means that either the project does not collect classifying information of specific topics or subjects. The film exposed in many different ways of how unethical it is to present fictional stories. Glass did this giving the wrong number, making a fake website, and making up fake locations. “Lying is the act of intentionally not telling the truth. It is nothing new. It has been around since the beginning of time.” Spurlock, Jefferson (2016) mentions that in his article. Lying is just a different way of saying fabrication and deception.
When Glass was working for The New Republic, he wrote 42 articles only over two years. He was loved by his coworkers and always seemed to have a good work ethic while being employed there as a journalist. He was good at what he did, which was writing. But he lacked one thing in particular, the truth. Glass started to think that fabricating his work would be the best idea for him since he was so good at doing it. He made everything seem real in the public eyes such as characters, scenes, and dialogue. Glass started to abuse his work and took things way too far.
The reason why I think Glass did what he did was because he was scared. He was scared he wasn’t going to succeed without cheating and loved the attention with it. Glass had done a talk show called 60-minutes interview, he lied because he enjoyed and craved the attention he was receiving. “I loved the electricity of people liking my stories. I loved going to story conference meetings and telling people what my story was going to be, and seeing the room excited. I wanted every story to be a home run.” Glass said during the 60-minute interview (Rebecca Leung, 2003). The ethical issues at stake are his loyalties to the company and the loss of consent from his boss and coworkers. Steve Glass had a choice to keep lying about his work or to come clean about his work.
Brian McNair talks about Glass and his role of journalism in liberal democracies and crisis of trust. He talks about trust to its producers and that if there is no trust in journalism, you lose reliability, accuracy and honesty. “Shattered Glass explores these tensions, and highlights the fragility of objectivity as a journalistic ethos in a highly competitive media market” (McNair, Brian, 2009). It explores the relationship between liberal journalism and the rise of online news media.
If I was facing a similar challenge as Glass, I would come clean as soon as possible before getting myself into a deeper hole. Once you realize that your boss is catching on to you, you need to step back and find a way to tell him/her that you have been fabricating your work. It’s not an easy thing to come clean about what you have been doing but it is better than ruining more of your chances for keeping your job. When Chuck, his boss found out about it the first time he was lying he just put Glass on a break and suspended him for a while, but then chuck found out more lies. Glass made things worse and ended up getting fired and got himself put into court.
Being a public relations major, I have recently found out that we do lie. As our job, we write press releases, memos, and etc. and we make-up what our clients say. I never heard something so irrational. We write what our clients want and make-up what they say. This is something I was very shocked about. I went through middle school, high school, and college learning that lying was unethical, this makes me see my major differently than I see Stephen Glasses job as a journalist.
Being put in this situation in the first place is a scary thing. You think lying once and getting away with it will work every time but it doesn’t. It’s a very serious issue and is very dangerous to your future. No one wants to hire a liar or have to fire one in that case. The lessons I have learned after watching the movie and listening to Glass’s interview on 60-minutes made me open my eyes. I personally have never gone to the point of lying in my stories that I have written in the past, nor do I plan too. Watching this movie taught me that it isn’t good to lie and fabricate your work, and that if you happen to do it anyways and people start to catch on is simply tell the truth. Write an apology as soon as possible and hope for the best outcome of your future.
References:
Trust Me, I’m a Journalist: Shattered Glass and the Crisis of Trust in Liberal Journalism. (Brian McNair)
Stephen Glass: I LIED FOR ESTEEM
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stephen-glass-i-lied-for-esteem-07-05-2003/
WHY JOURNALISTS LIE: THE TROUBLESOME TIMES FOR JANET COOKE, STEPHEN GLASS, JAYSON BLAIR, AND BRIAN WILLIAMS.