You need to make thousands of lies to just cover up one lie. In the end of the movie Shattered Glass, Stephen Glass admits that the 27 of 41 articles he wrote for The New Republic were fabricated. The process of investigate Stephen Glass is just like peeling an onion-when you finished peeling, you find nothing were there. Stephen Glass’s behavior was definitely unethical, just because you want to write an interesting story doesn’t mean that you need to fabricate it. Also, he has violated one of the most important rules —lying.
In the movie, the stories that Stephen Glass wrote were always interesting. His ideas always make his colleagues laugh and he slowly become the most popular journalists in The New Republic.I think one of the reasons that he fabricated his stories is because of his desire of people’s attention. He loves being praised and being the focus of the people. To remain people’s attention, he had to fabricated his news.
Similar to this case, there is also someone in the past who fabricate news to catch people’s eyes. Janet Cooke, a reporter who worked for The Washington Post, “Won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing with a story about an 8-year old heroin addict.”(Sager, 2016). Her Pulitzer Prize were later returned because of her fabrication of the story. “Cooke’s case also came to symbolize myriad other issues and transgressions in both journalism and the world at large, including the use of unnamed sources, minority recruitment, newsroom ethics, résumé fraud, and the tendency of some writers, operating in the genre known as creative nonfiction, to take license in the pursuit of more literary work” (Sager, 2016) These two reporters all brought up an issue that fabrication were not taken account of at that time . Simultaneously, these two authors have changed the media environment and results in the attention to academic integrity.
Another issue would be lying. “Lying is the act of intentionally not telling the truth”(Spurlock, 2016) .In the movie, Stephen Glass insist that his stories were true but when Charles went to fact check with him, Charles found that not one thing is real. Glass then lost all his credibility in the company. Lying was always not a good thing, especially when you are lying to your editor. According to Spurlock, “Self-esteem and social acceptance are two factors.”(Spurlock, 2016) Glass slowly dig himself a deep hole of lies and failed to come out of it. Like mention in the start of the paper, you need to make thousands of lies to just cover up one lie. The more lie you make, the harder you will get rid of it.
Fabrication and lying have still been a problem in today’s media. They want a “Holy Shit” news to win people’s attention and be the focus of the public. But what they don’t know is that they can achieve it by being honest to themselves. There will always be some interesting news around you, waiting for you to discover.
Reference:
SAGER, M. (2016). The fabulist who changed journalism. Columbia Journalism Review, 55(1), 52–60. Retrieved from http://ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=115672623&site=ehost-live&scope=site
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://ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=125698524&site=ehost-live&scope=site