Blog 2-“Shattered Glass” By: Kevin McConlogue

Situation:

In the movie Shattered Glass, we follow the Steve Glass who was a reporter for the New Republic magazine. He was a rising star in the world of journalism whose pieces were becoming must reads for everyone in the Washington D.C area. The pressure became so big on Glass to keep coming up with stories that he turned to some unethical practices.

Glass began to fabricate parts of stories or sometimes even make up the whole story. He even used fake sources and created fake websites to cover his tracks. When this was uncovered, he was fired from his job at the New Republic. Glass lost all of his ethical and journalistic credibility.

Analysis:

Young journalists like Steve Glass face a lot of pressure to keep producing new content, but turning in fabricated stories is one of the worst possible things that you could do from an ethical standard. Journalists should some of the most trusted people in the world and fabrication of stories will make the American people believe the exact opposite.

David Craig talks about his theories of ethics in journalism. Three of his main categories are verification, consequences, and alternatives. Steve Glass violated ethics with these three categories. He provided false verification by using his brother and friends as fake sources to try to verify his stories, which took away any sort of credibility that he had in the journalism world.

Journalism has lots of consequences that he did not think about. Publishing these fake stories not only puts his career in danger, but also the reputation of the outlet that the journalist works for in danger. You can hurt a lot of people’s careers by being an unethical journalist, which is why these principles are perfect to follow when working as a journalist.

Glass also felt the pressure of a changing journalism to make stories that would connect with his readers. Jane B. Singer writes in the MIT Press about the structure of changing journalism and how relationships with readers are changing. “Relationships between journalists and the audience are evolving, practitioners are revisiting ethical principles on maintaining professional distance and difference.”

It’s this type of pressure that makes journalists like Glass want to write these behind the scenes, all access stories because it’s what the audience wants, but it also creates more pressure to make the audience to want to continue to read the stories. Fabricating these details can sometimes make a story a better read and you cannot fall into that trap.

Conclusion:

Shattered Glass taught me a ton of lessons about the world of ethical journalism. It showed me that fabricating stories can have serious consequences and can truly ruin someone’s journalistic career.

The main thing that the movie showed me however, was the amount of pressure that journalists can be put under to come up with good stories. It can be overwhelming that sometimes it can lead to fabrication. Any job can put a lot of stress on a person, the world of journalism is no different.

References:

Craig, D., Ketterer, S., & Yousuf, M. (2017). To post or not to post: Online discussion of gun permit mapping and the development of ethical standards in data journalism. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 94(1), 168-188. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1177/1077699016684796

Singer, J. (2010). Journalism ethics amid structural change. Daedalus, 139(2), 89-99. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/stable/20749827

 

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