Situation Definition
This was a surreal episode that had ever been produced in The New Republic. In the spring of 1998, the lead editor Charles Lane would encounter the most sustained fraud in the history of modern journalism, happened from one of his reporters, Stephen Glass. In a moment, Lane now would fear every story Glass had presented, and every word he once said were wholly fabricated. Stephen Glass, the youngest associate editor at The New Republic who was aged 25 with the median age of 26 among the 15 writers and editors, was a white-hot rising star in Washington journalism. However, he ended up fabricating at least 27 of his 41 stories for The New Republic with a series breathtaking webs of deception from fake notes, quotes, voice mails, even a phony Web site. This case wasn’t just about a journalistic accident of unethical reporting. It was the ingenuity of the lies Glass had concocted, and an impromptu illusion made for fun and frolic that we all longed for once.
The key to understanding what was behind Glass’s behavior was the utter conviction that he was putting in practice of how “Journalism is just the art of capturing behavior”(Ray, 2003). Many argued that at the crudest level of speaking of the press industry, Glass, and all the other cheaters did what they could to ensure a place in a highly competitive media market. And they did because they could. From that matter, internal contradictions transferred to the outside in which it had called into question the credibility of the media industry to be able to foster good journalists. However, two scholarly articles Shattered Glass, Movies, and the Free Press Myth by Matthew C. Ehrlich and Why They Lie: Probing the Explanations for Journalistic Cheating by Ivor Shapiro suggested that excessive individual ambition pushed journalists such as Glass to put aside ethical principles to attract the audience in a way beyond the bottom line while the “self-regulation” of the press and the “fact-checking” internet helps to catch the cheaters and truth eventually takes hold.
Analysis
“You know what? Those kinds of pieces can win Pulitzers too” (Ray, 2003). The movie begins with sentences blurted out from a young journalist Stephen Glass taking to himself. He spoke of journalism in beautifully ways with calm and confidence. His eyes shined with a yearning eagerness flitted across his face. Shattered Glass was a 2003 drama film based on true-life biography of journalist Stephen Glass and his ethical dilemmas at The New Republic. The tone of the film is gradual in progress, yet with profound contradictions and tensile narratives. When the scam was revealed at the end of the film, question and astonishment as to why Glass did what he did would find its answer at the beginning of the film.
What Glass said at the beginning of the film explained his original journalistic intention. Life was tedious and brief, and Glass had always been knowing this. He knew how his audience has longed for legend, hero, genius, and juicy anecdote. He also proved adept at manipulating human emotions by plaintively asking, “Are you mad at me?” (Ray, 2003). As a result, this smart and sensitive young journalist who would disarm any potential criticism at the office by his plaintive asking, offered a steady stream of his thoughtful “novel materials” to develop into news articles for his colleagues who showed a desire for something juicy. What the audience and the editors fell in love at the time was the picture depicted in the lies.
Indeed, humanistic and interesting soft news can attract readers’ interest, but Glass forgets that central to the role of journalism is the truth, which vitally ties with the degree of trust extended by publics to all journalists. A journalist is not only an intellectual of daily life knowledge but also a popularizer of ideas, reality, and truth. In order for authority in journalism to be effective and perform journalistic duties, there must be trust in the journalist’s credibility, transparency, and honesty. What Glass did destroyed that public trust in journalism, where news in his eyes is nothing more than a tool to play with for fame and fortune.
In addition to highlighting the fragility of media ethics when it comes to temptation especially in a highly competitive market, the movie Shattered Glass also makes one point in particular, which is the idea that truth “sets us free” (Ehrlich, 2005, p.144). And this is achieved by “the press’s ability and responsibility to report the truth” (p.144). In the film, it eventually depicts two characters who represent opposite values and the process of their conflicts to carry out its message. One is the “good” editor Chuck Lane, and another one is the “bad” reporter Stephen Glass. At film’s end, the staffs who had previously been hostile toward Lane offered him an apology and a demonstration of approval by clapping hands for Lane’s efforts in restoring justice and truth.
The “self-regulation of the press” does help in prevailing the truth, but the internet seems to help to catch the cheaters too. “If you think you’ve seen a passage somewhere before, it’s no longer hard work to find the smoking gun of plagiarism” (Shapiro, 2006, p. 261). The suggestion being that putting the fear of God in journalists may help but certainly is not necessary. In present times, there is a growing awareness of media ethics in the journalism world. After all, the world was not “just the Stephen Glasses who worked in journalism, but also people fighting the good fight and trying to defend the honor of the press” (Ehrlich, 2005, p.110).
Conclusion
Fame is a favorable public reputation that all human beings desire, but it has its price. And lies could never be paying off that price. In the film Shattered Glass, lessons can be learned through the modeling of framing the two figures who represent the different journalistic values. Both characters in the film showcase the central virtues of journalism by taking examples of Glass’s disgrace, and Lane’s noblest act. Lane represents the so-called “official hero in putting the common good ahead of private notions of right and wrong and Glass embodied the outlaw characteristics of thumbing one’s nose at prevailing authority and morality” (Ehrlich, 2005, p.112).
Nevertheless, Shattered Glass raised a question, yet also proposed an answer within. It expressed faith in the press system and a wish of the more substantial existence of good journalists out there in the world. According to the film, individual journalists may go astray due to their excessive ambitions; however, the system stays still and faithful “to the principles of self-regulation in policing and correcting itself” (Ehrlich, 2005, p.112).
References
Ehrlich, M. C. (2005). Shattered Glass, Movies, and the Free Press Myth. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 29(2), 103–118. https://doi-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1177/0196859904272741
Shapiro, I. (2006). Why They Lie: Probing the Explanations for Journalistic Cheating. Canadian Journal of Communication, 31(1), 261–266. https://doi-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.22230/cjc.2006v31n1a1595