- Meg Maningo
- Jul 16, 2019
- 3 min read
Shattered Glass (2003) was interesting because my initial perception of journalists was right and indeed, there are people who come to the point where they fabricate their stories so they could grab not only the readers’ attention but also the attention of his colleagues. This is where I would draw a line because these kinds of journalists are feeding lies and it makes you question who you can trust as readers because they were supposed to be trusted.
The main issue the movie presents is the fabrication of stories done by Stephen Glass, a writer of the New Republic magazine, who deceived readers and his co-workers. Out of his 41 articles, 27 of those articles are either completely or partially fabricated. As I watched the final scenes of this film, I was honestly surprised because I expected that maybe he’d only done it a few times but seeing that he’d done more than what I had suspected, I was disappointed. Other than that, he tried covering up his mistakes by lying and to be honest, I believe that he thought he had everything under control and his cover-up was genius but with his lack of skill, he wasn’t smart enough to fool everyone such as one of the writers of Forbes, Adam Penenberg, who immediately saw the discrepancies in his article on the hacker. In the film, he did not stop his pursuit in finding out the truth about the article on the hacker being paid by a company. He was persistent in looking into the facts that Glass had quoted. Suspicion arose when the newly promoted editor of the New Republic, Chuck Lane, started checking the facts and found about Glass’ mistakes.
Meanwhile, Lane was known to be quite the entertainer when it comes to his stories. Many of his colleagues were amazed by his stories and always wondered how he finds such eccentric stories. Some even wondered how he was able to find people with such character. An example would be the hacker article as he quoted the “hacker” saying, “Show me the money!” It made the whole team a laugh. At first, Lane was unconvinced by Penenberg as Glass was the type of person who brought good stories and was well-liked by everyone. There was no doubt in his mind that Glass would do such a thing; however, this image of Glass changed when he started doing the research himself and investigated all the notes or facts that Glass presented to him. Once he realized that Glass had been lying on the hacker article, Lane suspended him. Upon further investigation, things turned out to be worse than he initially thought until eventually he fired Glass once and for all. Everyone else was surprised by the revelation of Glass being dismissed and some of his colleagues such as Caitlin Avey defended Glass yet they had no idea what he had really done. Lane did what he had to do so as to protect the reputation of New Republic and everyone working for the magazine.
My take on this matter is that this kind of dilemma cannot be avoided. In my perspective, the fabrication of stories written by Glass was an act of seeking validation from his peers. He was desperate for attention while also wanting his own share of fame. At one point, Glass achieved this fame as readers wanted to hear more of his entertaining stories as well as his co-workers. Despite the attention he had garnered, it was short-lived and it only took one person to take everything away from him. Consequently, I believe that Glass had his own faults but I also want to emphasize the fact that it took 27 articles for Glass to be called out for what he did. In addition, the person who sought out Glass’ lies was not even from the same company and this speaks volumes about New Republic. If it weren’t for Penenberg, Glass might still be working for the magazine. Similarly, if it weren’t for Lane’s determination to find out the truth, Glass would’ve stayed and continued to write about more lies. Indeed, I am grateful for those people who are persistent in seeking out what the truth is even if it may be a hassle or something they could easily brush off. In this case, they exposed him and it was to everyone’s benefit because it was not an act of dishonesty that was the only problem but the fact that he had been doing it for years tells us that he had no intention of stopping of fabricating stories. With that in mind, Penenberg and Lane fortunately pursued and discovered the truth.
