In Shattered Glass, journalist, Stephen Glass, used his platform in The New Republic — a respected, news-based magazine — to gain commercial success through the falsehood of his writing. Ethically unsound, Glass chose to fabricate 27 of his published 41 stories and then construct complex falsifications about said stories when asked to provide more information. Fabrication and lying are both extremely unethical, especially in the field of journalism because our purpose is to inform the public of the facts that they need to know.
The most unfortunate piece of this particular fabrication case was that “by age twenty-five, he was ‘the most sought- after young reporter in the nation’s capital,’ not only a star writer and associate editor at his own magazine but also a contributor to such publications as Harper’s and Rolling Stone” (Ehrlich 527). The reason behind this misfortune is the capacity of the audience that was reached by his editorial work. Not only did glass write consistently for an extremely credible news outlet, he even expanded his reach by freelancing for other publications whose credibility could have also been put at risk.
The film exacerbated this point when depicting the almost sociopathic nature of Glass; “Shattered Glass forgoes a more searching critique of the press in favor of presenting “a nostalgic view of a credible, longstanding enterprise betrayed by a pathological liar,” (Ehrlich 538). What made the situation even more dramatic was the extent that Glass went to in order to cover up his written fabrications. The elaborate nature of his lies went above and beyond by creating “[false] documents and reporter’s notes, to trick our editors and elude our fact-checkers” (Jennings 650).
In a situation like this, it is easier for the person behaving unethically to simply expel the fact that they were not being trustworthy because of the fear they harbored relating to their talent and career. What Glass did was the opposite and also exponentially more difficult than the option above. A possible solution to this initially would have been to come clean about the falsehood of his work before it became the majority of the products he was putting out into the public eye. He would have suffered consequences and maybe would have gotten suspended but would have most likely had the opportunity to use that suspension to find the help he needed to get back on track rather than ruin his entire career and the credibilities of those he surrounded himself with.
References:
Marianne M. Jennings* (2005). ARTICLE: WHERE ARE OUR MINDS AND WHAT ARE WE THINKING? VIRTUE ETHICS FOR A “PERFIDIOUS” MEDIA 1
1 With gratitude to H.L. Mencken who described the average American newspaper as “ignorant, unfair, hypocritical, perfidious, lewd and dishonest.” John C. Merrill, Legacy of Wisdom 169 (1994). Mencken was actually generous with those comments. He reserved his most harsh comments for schools of journalism: “Probably half of them, indeed, are simply refuges for students too stupid to tackle the other professions.” Id.
. Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy, 19, 637. Retrieved from https://advance-lexis-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/api/document?collection=analytical-materials&id=urn:contentItem:4GBF-1B90-00CV-K0H2-00000-00&context=1516831.
Matthew C. Ehrlich, Hollywood and Journalistic Truthtelling, 19 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics
& Pub. Pol’y 519 (2005).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndjlepp/vol19/iss2/9