The film Shattered Glass shows how rewarding the journalism field can be rewarding, but also damaging. Shattered Glass follows a young and eager journalist who is passionate about what he does, but he has one downfall: he fabricated many facts in his stories. Glass was thrilled to be working for The New Republic which was one of the publications that could be found on Air Force One. Two major ethical issues that Glass was faced with were honesty and integrity.
Glass did not seem to believe that what he was doing was wrong, and a majority of his stories proved to have ethical issues. Locations and people were made up in multiple stories, and Glass even went through the trouble to cover his tracks. Glass even went as far as to create a fake website and record phone calls. This simply shows that he knew he was doing something wrong and wanted to make sure that nobody would find out.
Integrity was a huge issue with Glass. The word integrity means the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. This is something that Glass most definitely did not possess. Journalists have to do the leg work to make sure all their facts are accurate. It is the job of journalists to inform the public of what is going on, and their stories are aimed to create a difference in our communities, not matter how big or small. “More than ever, rewarding conscience and integrity in the practice of our craft seems warranted.” (Doyle, 2006, p.115). Going the extra mile is expected of journalists, and it is still unknown why Glass did not do this. He was however able to convince his coworkers and peers that he was being honest. While he did not make sure his stories were credible, he did go the extra mile to cover up his tracks.
Honesty was another character trait that Stephen Glass did not possess. When he was confronted about fabricating his stories, he claimed that everything he had written was true. Glass’s boss even brought him to the site of a convention that Glass had mentioned in a story about a computer hacker. In the real-life documentary, Glass admitted that he had never been to the building in his life, and said that he had to come up with details over the top of his head. According to Spurlock (2016) “But why do people lie? Self-esteem and social acceptance are two factors” (p.71). Glass stated that the first time he spruced up a story, it seemed so much better than the original, and he continued to do this with all of his stories. After seeing how much fame he acquired from his first fabricated story, Glass most likely could not bear the fact that his other stories would not be as famous as his last.
The consequences of this are that journalists are losing their creditability. Journalists are supposed to serve the public and tell the people what is really going on. If they cannot be trusted, who can be trusted then? One way to solve this would be to put one’s ego aside. If Glass was not so obsessed with rising to fame in the journalism world, he would have been more honest and not fabricated major components in his stories.
Resources:
Doyle, J. (2006) Conscience and Integrity in Journalism. Nieman Report, 60(2), 115-116
Spurlock, J. (2016) Why Journalists Lie: The Troublesome Times for Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Brian Williams. et Cetera, 73(1), 71-76