Blog #2 Shattered Glass – by Maive Bellios

 

Blog #2: Shattered Glass

Introduction

There were many ethical issues weaved into the movie ‘Shattered Glass.’ Stephen Glass used a lot of adventurous thinking and ended up taking things way too far, and ultimately ruined his career. It manifested into something that started out as a little white lie that he could’ve easily come back from. In turn, he got so used to lying that it became almost second nature to lie in his stories. After a while, he started manipulating his colleagues by being a very nice, upstanding guy and always making it a point make sure people weren’t mad at him.

For me, his deception and inaccuracy were the main ethical issues I took away from this movie. It really made me think about my future as a journalist and the messages I want to be sending out to my audience. It also made me step back and think about legacies, I don’t want to be known for stretching the truth, I want to be known for being a well-rounded truthful writer. Being a journalist without stretching the truth is the only route to go. It’s only fair to your audience to be completely truthful because people put their full trust in you.

Analysis

I truly feel that Stephen Glass did what he did because he got in way over his head and felt as though he needed to do whatever he could to cover his tracks. Even though he could’ve come clean early on and might’ve gotten a slight suspension instead of destroying his whole career.

Especially with the digital age of the communication that our society has adopted we need to set our standards higher and have the specific rules, we have talked about in class, enforced. Journalism requires you to tell the full truth. In the movie we saw how much the internet played a factor in Stephen Glass’ fabrications, he created a fake website and fake numbers and email addresses for people to contact. If we weren’t so advanced in the digital age none of that would be possible. So keeping checks on journalist’s accuracy is highly important.

To go along with this there are among other things that threaten the standard of reporting and writing in general. Journalism has such a reliable and strong backbone that we can’t just let that all go now. There are just so many social avenues that tempt writers to make their own rules in this industry and that is not okay. Stephen Glass is just one example of people that have taken advantage of their position and manipulated people close to them.

Admittedly it is very hard to weed out and tell who’s lying because they can be so believable and lead you to think they would never do something like that. I know it’s difficult to have gatekeepers in this time of journalism. So, fact checkers are a very essential and key part of the operation they need to be as thorough as ever, so that’s what I feel the solution should head towards,

Conclusion

This situation is very easy, for me at least, to know exactly what is right from wrong. I actually am striving for a career in journalism and want my reputation to be highly revered. So, I have learned that just being honest is the best policy, by far. If you are a good writer and honest your editors and co-workers will want to work with you to make your work great, instead of fabricating a story to gather a big audience.

The solution is not that simple in my opinion, obviously firing him is the right thing to do. In this situation though, Glass ended up back on his feet and is still relatively accomplished regardless of all the things he’s done to deceive the public. So, in my mind I don’t necessarily understand how that’s right, how he still gets to have an accomplished career, knowing he did all these bad things.

 

References

Muller, D. (2015). Journalism ethics for the digital age. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Ward, S. J. (2010). Global journalism ethics. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

About Maive

Hi i'm Maive Bellios, a member of the Theatre 297 class. I am a junior at Penn State, majoring in journalism with a theater minor. I love to listen to music in my free time as well as experiment with fashion and makeup!
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