In “Shattered Glass” a young reporter for The New Republic was caught fabricating the majority of his stories. Stephen Glass made up locations and sources for his stories and even went so far as to cover up his tracks with fake descriptions of events and locations as well as fake phone numbers and websites. The two main issues in which Stephen Glass exhibited questionable ethics are first and most obviously, the fabrications in his stories, but also lying after the fact. His coworkers often defended him when questions arose about his stories, but he had deceived them just as he had deceived his audience.
It seemed throughout the movie that he came up with stories because he loved the attention and accolades that came with telling an entertaining story. There were many scenes in the movie where he is pitching his outlandish stories to his coworkers. He seems to enjoy making them laugh, but more than that, the praise that follows. It seems to be important to him that he is well liked. In an article published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry it says, “In our opinion, pathological lying can be considered as a disorder by itself, but is probably more often comorbid with some personality deviations, such as a personality disorder, as will be argued below.” One could argue that if Stephen Glass is a pathological liar, then he could be exempt from criticism because he has a disorder. I obviously can’t speak to whether or not he is one, but I do believe that he has learned many times throughout his education and career that fabrication is wrong. I don’t think he lied so much because he couldn’t control himself. I think he just loved the praise that much.
Glass created fake websites and phone numbers as well as brought his editor to show him places where events never transpired. According to a paper from the University of Amsterdam, “To protect one’s positive self‐view, people tend to attribute failure externally and successes internally and, importantly, they may shy away from unethical and morally inappropriate behaviour that, however beneficial materially, may hurt their social standing and private self‐image.” A lot of the lies Glass tells his coworkers are deflecting blame elsewhere. When he is first caught in a lie, he claims that he was fooled by someone else, which goes along with the first part of the quote. But, contrary to the research, he continues to be unethical in order to protect his self-view.
To the best of my knowledge, Stephen Glass lied about his stories because he wanted the accolades that came with an entertaining story. Glass’s case is a unique one because he doesn’t appear to be a pathological liar, but he is still more concerned with protecting his lies than his self-view.
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