Situation Definition
When choosing to pursue a career in journalism you’re choosing to pursue a career in telling the truth. By being a journalist and not telling the truth, you’re not a very good journalist — you’re just a good storyteller. By writing articles and stories that aren’t true, you’re lying to an entire audience of people that trust you, and breaking one of the most important rules in ethical journalism.
Stephen Glass not only broke one of the most basic rules one must follow by being a journalist, but he did it over and over again. To make matters worse, even after getting caught he continued to fabricate information in order to try and find his way out of what seemed to be a never ending lie instead of taking responsibility for his actions which are two pertinent ethical issues.
Analysis
Based on the clip we watched on Stephen Glass in class, he started lying on a small scale. In order to make stories perfect or slightly more intriguing he would change small parts of his stories like a source’s quote or some other seemingly insignificant detail. Unfortunately for Glass, eventually his practice spiraled out of control and became a much larger issue.
Just as we saw with Stephen Glass, lying usually begins as a way to test and see how far one can push the boundaries in order get away with something (Spurlock, 2016, p. 72). Often times “lying gets worse with the passage of time,” and in Stephen Glass’s case, once the lying began it didn’t stop (Spurlock, 2016, p. 72).
For a long time Glass got away with fabricating stories. No one at his office suspected any wrong-doing until people from Forbes Magazine started investigating “Hack Heaven.” Once Glass realized people were catching on to his untruths, he began fabricating more fake information like phone numbers, websites, voicemails and notes; a practice many liars partake in to further avoid taking accountability and being caught (Spurlock, 2016, p. 72).
“The trust of ones audience is vital to journalism’s core function” which Glass ultimately ruined by repeatedly putting out stories that contained falsehood’s big and small (Fink, 2018, p. 40). Even if he was able to regain the trust of his employer, his readers and audience would never know if the information Glass was writing about was true.
Glass was working for one of the top newspapers in the country which thousands of other journalists who followed ethical principles would have taken advantage of if they were given the same opportunity. If I was facing a similar situation I would have immediately owned up to my lie in hopes to maintain some trust between my employer and readers.
Conclusion
In Stephen Glass’s case I believe there would have been no other solution than for him to own up to his lies and hope he didn’t get fired. Because of the amount of stories that were fabricated I think The New Republic made the correct decision firing him.
The story of Stephen Glass is a wonderful example of what not to do while being a journalist. I learned that no lie is acceptable while being in this field and it’s much easier to go to work every day knowing your telling your audience the truth and don’t have to worry about your boss catching you lying.
References
Fink, K. (2019). The biggest challenge facing journalism: A lack of trust. Journalism, 20(1), 40– 43. https://doi-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1177/1464884918807069
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://search.ebscohost.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/ login.aspxdirect=true&db=ufh&AN=125698524&site=ehost-live&scope=site