Blog 2 – “Shattered Glass” by Ryan Marks

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Ryan Connor Marks

Situation Definition:

One issue I can see clearly in the movie “Shattered Glass”, was Stephen Glass lying in his articles and fabricating multiple stories and elements within them. He made up certain events such as the hacker convention and the minibar at the young conservatives conference. He also often times invented people’s names or made up organizations with fake quotes to emphasize the story he created.

It gets even worse for Stephen when he continued to lie to try and get himself out of trouble. Obviously, you should never lie to begin with, I believe you should always be transparent and honest with what you know. Stephen would’ve been in trouble for sure but it wouldn’t be nearly as bad if he hadn’t continued lying. Creating a fake company and a website to go with it as well as having his brother pretend to be the representative for Jukt Micronics is a very big ethical violation in my opinion.

Analysis:

I think Stephen Glass made all these stories up because he wanted to be famous and be known as a great reporter. Once he got caught, I think he panicked and tried to cover his trail which led to a worse consequence than if he came forward. This is obviously a huge ethical violation as a journalist should never lie and they should also never make anything up in their articles. Like I said earlier, I think journalists should always be straightforward and honest as the main goal is to deliver unbiased news to the public. When you lie as Stephen Glass did, you lose your credibility as a journalist and risk nobody trusting or believing in you. If that was me, I would never have made anything up to begin with but if I was in Stephen’s position, I would have just been honest with the editor and came clean. I’ve seen multiple other news sites report about Stephen Glass’s coverup. One questioned his ability to be a lawyer after years of lying to the public through his articles. One that I really found interesting was an article from the New Republic by one of his old coworkers who interviewed him years later. Most people think the same thing, that what Stephen Glass did was disgraceful and thoughtless. “Yes, journalists should certainly be honest in their activities, in both investigating and reporting. But suppose some public corruption can be investigated only undercover, with the journalist pretending to be someone ready to make a corrupt deal? Or suppose there is a war on, and the journalist discovers something that might harm the war effort?”. This was a quote from a scholarly source titled Ethical Issues in Journalism and Media, which was about ethical issues and what questions should be considered before thinking about doing something you find ethical or unethical.

Some of the scholarly sources I looked at talked about ethics in journalism in other countries which I found interesting comparing it to everyday journalism in the United States. One of them was about the issues involving character assassination and junk journalism in the Nigerian press, titled Review of some Ethical Issues in Nigerian Journalism Practice: Afghanistanism, Character Assassination and Junk Journalism. The Hwang Scandal and Korean News Coverage: Ethical Considerations, was another source I looked at and this one talked about the ethical issues journalists face when they are tasked with a big scandal or something private.

Conclusion:

Something I learned from this whole story was to be completely honest because you never know when something will be fact-checked and you can be fired. I also learned that in order to be a good journalist, you need to be able to make tough decisions and sometimes those decisions aren’t a favorable one. The possible for Stephen Glass would’ve been to just go to Chuck or Michael and just confessed to fabricating the stories and after that stop doing it and be completely truthful. 

If he were to come clean, he probably would’ve faced suspension or possible fired but it would be much less certain had he not done what he did to cover it up. I would’ve told the editor and Stephen that since Stephen is a great writer who trying to make a name for himself he shouldn’t have been punished to the extent that he was but he crossed the line of no return when he made the fake website for Jukt Micronics.

I believe that if Stephen stopped lying once he got caught by Forbes then he wouldn’t have had a serious punishment. I think at that point he’s likeability and reputation as a good writer would’ve gotten him only a suspension at worst. 

References:

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply