Part 1. Situation definition:
The movie “Shattered Glass” tells the story of a young writer in Washington D.C. named Stephen Glass. Glass worked for “The New Republic”, a powerful magazine company known for their influence on political leaders. Glass gained popularity fast within the firm, wining over the hearts of coworkers and readers through his entertaining and extravagant stories. Because of his reputation, Glass was able to fool his editors into publishing exaggerated and fabricated stories, over and over again. It was not until the publication of his story “Hack Heaven” that Glass was caught. After looking into his articles it was proven that twenty-seven of his forty-one articles published were fabricated in some way. This completely goes against ethics in journalism.
Ethics in journalism is extremely important because “Journalists strive to tell the truth in their news reports, and readers and audiences expect to encounter truth in the reports they consult. Yet journalism often fails to acknowledge a fundamental aspect of its truth-telling project: It can be surprisingly hard to tell the truth.” (Forde, 2012) It is a sense of morality on the part of the reporter to publish the truth, something that Glass simply did not do. Stephanie Craft defines Journalism as “a profession, and a professional journalist is someone who gathers and reports news according to moral standards that are higher than the standards others who might gather and report news would follow”(Craft, 2017). Glass completely breaks ethical boundaries by fabricating facts in his stories, and convincing his editors his lies are true.
Part 2. Analysis:
The first ethical issue that Glass raised was the creating the lies themselves. Journalists are trusted by the public and their agency to tell the truth in their articles. Journalists are held accountable for “the independence, reliability, accuracy and trustworthiness of the sources that generate the information” (Quinn, 2017). Based on this definition of journalism, Glass broke all these boundaries. In his story that brought all his lies to light, “Hack Heaven”, Glass fabricated the whole event. He claimed a young hacker was trying to get thousands of dollars from a California software firm called Jukt Micronics. Glass made up the boy, the software firm, and every piece inside the story. He fabricated sources and quotes from the meeting. He made up a fake website for Jukt Micronics and fake phone numbers for the fake people. Glass goes against reliability and accuracy and tried to hide his deceptions, which broke his trustworthiness. Glass was malicious in his intent. He knew what he was doing when creating this story and went to the far extremes to try and cover himself. Being a journalist Glass should have understood his civic duty to report the truth.
To judge why Glass fabricated these stories to begin with can come from different many reasons. One reason why Glass lied was because he enjoyed his rising popularity within the firm. Everyone loved Glass’s stories; they were humorous, extravagant, and entertaining. He liked being liked, and wanted to keep publishing the types of stories he believed people enjoyed reading. Robert Hauptman claims in his journal that authors “manipulate, alter, distort, and create their own versions of reality… sometimes fantasy or fabrication becomes so overwhelming that the dissimulator comes to believe that his or her version of reality is valid.” (Hauptman, 2008). This shows another reason why Glass denied the lies once confronted about them. Glass was in so deep he believed his lies were the truth. Chuck Lane, the editor for the New Republic, took Glass down to the hotel that was claimed to be the meeting place for the hacker and Jukt Micronics. Acknowledging that the place was way to small and closed on Sundays, Glass continued to try and convince Lane that his story was true. Glass so devoted to proving he did nothing wrong that these lies that they became his reality.
The second ethical issue broken by Glass was his lack of remorse for what he did. In class we discussed how to be an effective journalist you have to be trusted by your colleagues. Glass was able to gain the trust of his coworkers while he knew he was feeding them lies. At the beginning of the film glass writes an article about a political rally and gets questioned by his editor on the reliability of the article. Glass convinces him that his facts are right and they publish the article, knowing the whole time that these facts were exaggerated or made up. This was the first warning. When glass is eventually caught he has no remorse for what he did. He never fully admits out loud that the twenty- seven articles were fabricated.
Glass knew going into his articles that he was making up stories. He goes against the idea that journalist “must be accurate and truthful in their reports of facts and relevant nonfactual claims, but they must pursue and usually procure verification of those claims. Second, they must be sincere in their intentions. To better understand these concept” (Quinn, 2017). When he is confronted about his lies Glass continues to lie, saying he wrote the truth. Glass is not sorry for tricking his co-workers, he is not sorry for publishing lies, and he is not sorry for giving the public false information.
Part 3. Conclusion:
The ethical issues that Glass raised destroyed his credibility. He lost the trust of his co-workers, audiences, and friends. Trust is something so simple that is essential to good journalism. I believe that firms put a certain sense of trust in their journalist to report the truth. I enjoyed watching this film because it opened my eyes to a side of journalism I never really thought of before. It showed me to sometimes doubt and question what I see in the media, as sometimes journalistic biases and deceptions do get written and published.
If this dilemma would have happened to me as an editor I would have assigned a co-writer to cover some of Glass’s stories with him after the first time I noticed some of his facts did not add up. I would have cross-examined the facts that they both provided to make sure these articles were complete truth. I also would have looked into the company before publishing the article. There were so many red flags that could have easily been checked out before, such as the hotel being closed on Sunday and the restaurant they claimed they ate dinner at closing before dinner time. Little fact checks could have prevented this whole blow up in the long run.
If I was in the same situation as Glass was, I would have owned up to my lies and told my boss the truth when he first questioned me. I always believe that telling the truth is better than lying and hate dealing with the guilt of lying. It would have been hard for me to publish these articles filled with lies in the back of my head knowing I did it on purpose. Telling the truth is always the better way to go and is the only ethical option when it comes to journalism.
Part 4. References:
Craft, S. (2017). Distinguishing Features: Reconsidering the Line Between Journalism’s Professional Status and Ethics. Journalism & Communication Monographs, 19(4). 260-301. doi:10.1177/1522637917734213
Forde, K. R. (2012). The Enduring Problem of Journalism: Telling the Truth. Journal Of Magazine & New Media Research. 13(1). 1-9
Hauptman, R. (2008). Authorial Ethics: How Writers Abuse Their Calling. Journal Of Scholarly Publishing, 39(4), 323-353. doi:10.3138/jsp.39.4.323
Quinn, A. (2017). Fake News, False Beliefs, and the Need for Truth in Journalism. International Journal Of Applies Philosophy, 31(1), 21-29. doi:10.5840/ijap201771884