Situation Definition:
Journalism plays a big part in our lives today. In the movie “Shattered Glass” the main character Stephen Glass was reporter who worked for The New Republic in Washington DC. He was a very nice person who was very social with his coworkers and who also had a good personality. Unfortunately, while working for The New Republic he made stories up and also plagiarized which got him fired from his job. While doing this Stephen Glass deceived the audience and his colleagues, something a journalist should never do.
Glass was not honest with the readers and his colleagues. He started to make up fake people, fake websites, fake phone numbers, fake voicemails and also fake events. While at The New Republic Glass fabricated 27 out of 41 stories during his time working for the magazine. The two ethical issues that stood out to me while watching the film were the fabrication and the trust between Steve Glass and his colleagues.
Analysis:
One of the reasons why I think Steve Glass fabricated the stories he wrote is because he thought was good at it. He was so good at it that people actually believed the fake stories that he had written but unfortunately one of his colleagues Charles Lane caught him in the act. Steve Glass published “Hack Haven” a story about a 15-year-old hacker who had extorted a high-paying job with Jukt Micronics in exchange for not penetrating databases. Forbes Digital Tool, a website covering the industry, thought that the website was an interesting story and assigned a reporter to check it out. But, the reporter found no evidence that Jukt Micronics ever existed and that’s when Charles Lane demanded verification from Steve Glass (Foreman pg. 137).
Steve Glass once told Steve Kroft (2003) of CBS’s 60 Minutes, “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” (p.1). Every story was a home run until Glass got caught. Glass was eventually fired from the New Republic.
An ethical issue at stake here was that Steve Glass was not honest with the readers nor was any of his sources credible. If I was Steve Glass I would be honest to the people that are reading my stories because if I was reading one of Steve Glass’ articles and it turned out to be fabricated I would be really upset. That is one thing a good journalist should never do.
The other issue that caught my eye while watching this film was the trust that Steve Glass gave his colleagues. In the one articles that I found on the CMMC database it describes how in December 2015 there were two major journalistic scandals that hit the Danish news media which received a lot of media attention. This reminds me of Steve Glass because like this Danish news media there was a diminish of trust and a credibility problem for the news media that was affected sort of like the way The New Republic was affected.
This article describes how the media tries to distance themselves from journalist involved in scandals like this and calls these journalist “bad apples” and that is what I think about Steve Glass is in this movie a “bad apple.” I think that in stories like this news companies should hire honest people to write true credible articles for its readers. If I were in Steve Glass’ shoes I would of came clean to my colleagues and told them the truth after the first fabricated story so I would gain their trust back.
Conclusion:
One lesson I learned from this movie is that you should not lie in the workplace because that can get you into a lot of trouble from your job and could also get you fired from your job. Lying to the readers and to your colleagues does not just hurt them you are also hurting yourself by doing this. I thought that firing Steve Glass was the right thing to do because of all the drama that happened. Possible solutions for this situation should have been that Steve Glass should have told the truth and not continue to fabricate these stories and deceive the readers.
He should of went to the head of the magazine and tell them exactly what he did the first time he lied so that he would not get into more trouble. I also think that The New Republic should have done a more intense background check on Glass to see if he had previously lied in past jobs. As a journalist, you should be truthful in what you write and not lie to your readers.
References:
Blach-Orsten, M., Hartley, J. M., & Wittchen, M. B. (2018). “A MATTER OF TRUST: Plagiarism, fake sources, and paradigm repair in the Danish news media.” Journalism Studies. 19 (13): 1889-98. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=4&sid=e4de1059-221a-4d03-9a46-92a473a753a3%40sessionmgr4006&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=131598326&db=ufh.
SPURLOCK, J. (2016). Why Journalists Lie: The Troublesome Times for Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Brian Williams. ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 73(1), 71–76. Retrieved from http://ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=125698524&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Foreman, Gene (2016). The Ethical Journalist Making Responsible Decisions in the Digital Age. Second Edition ed. Hoboken: Wiley.