Situation Definition
Stephen Glass thought that it was better to fabricate a story for the fantastical grip of an engaging narrative than to take a creative approach to real life, no matter how mundane it may be. On top of that, he backed himself into a corner several times with lies to defend his fiction as fact.
Analysis
Glass new what it meant to draw readers in, but he prioritized that over the integrity of the reporting itself. You can argue that many news outlets spin stories to sound more interesting than they are, but this is to an entirely different degree. The goal of the outlet should be to draw readers in, but still tell the facts as they are. Glass only focused on the first part.
Many of the companies named in his stories were completely made up. But for those about real life organizations, how could Glass not expect some line of questioning to come back to him? If anything, he should have been using fake people and places for all of them. I’m not condoning it, I’m just trying to reason with his plan.
“I loved the electricity of people liking my stories. I loved going to story conference meetings and telling people what my story was going to be, and seeing the room excited. I wanted every story to be a home run.” Glass told Steve Kroft of CBS. (p. 73, Spurlock, 2016)
He went to such extensive degrees of planning and storytelling to arrange some of the scenarios. He even brought his family in on it when he had his brother in El Paso posing as one of his characters. They were extremely intricate and well-thought out. He was completely aware of what he was doing, there’s no question of that, but it’s fascinating how he went to so much trouble for something he knew was wrong, when he could simply trouble himself with the real challenge of working in this field, and instead of constantly having to cover his tracks, he would be able to rest knowing he did well.
According to an article titled Are White Lies as Innocuous as We Think?, “Deceivers will be motivated to decrease the unpleasant state of dissonance and will do so by engaging in judgments and behaviors that favor the target of the white lie.” (p. 1100, Argo, 2012)
This is reflected in how Glass behaved around his co-workers. He was always pleasant and made sure to be very close to many of them because it gave him the veil of being a trustworthy person. As long as he was keeping them happy, they wouldn’t question any of the little lies he told along the way.
Conclusion
Regardless of the legality of it all, there was a reason that Glass was able to draw so many people in. He’s an excellent writer. He could have gone into fictional writing and probably made a decent living there, but instead he went into one of the main industries that leave no room for fiction. Behavior like this is what contributes to stigmas about the news media even to this day. As I mentioned before, if I were in his position, though realistically I wouldn’t be, I probably would have strayed away from using real people in places in any of the stories, let alone getting other people in on your side of it, like his brother. The more stakeholders you bring in, the more the odds are dramatically increased against your favor. If he had come clean right off the bat, he probably could have even gotten off and become a satirical writer. But he dug himself too deep.
References
Argo, J. J., & Shiv, B. (2012). Are White Lies as Innocuous as We Think? Journal of Consumer Research, 38(6), 1093–1102. https://doi-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1086/661640
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://search.ebscohost.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=125698524&site=ehost-live&scope=site