“It’s indefenseble!” yelled the editor.
Although the above quote includes a word that might not actually be a word, the thought contains no confusion. The aforementioned line comes from the movie Shattered Glass, a film about the unethical rogue “culinary” journalism of the New Republic’s former staff columnist Stephen Glass.
The film depicts the rise an fall of the young writer and of his fictional Non-Fiction. His work masqueraded as hard news but later found more suitable for the pages of fictional novels. Stephen writes a story about a hacker gone millionaire, and finds that his best story would also be the his most scrutinized.
Relying on a house of cards for sources, Mr Glass tries to stave off source scrutiny with charm and deception. For example, when his editor, Chuck, tries to bridge a contact to the main character in Glass’ story, Stephen dismisses his editor’s attempt to get in touch with the hacker gone good with the line, “hackers have agents too.”
In the end, his story about the Hacker was found false for multiple reasons including the absolute impossibility of a convention in a building unable to accommodate more than a few people. In fact, 27 out of his 41 stories were found “cooked”, thus providing a question for further review. Does the aftermath of doing journalism wrong mean the writer’s “life is over”?
The movie provides one answer in that at the end it reveals to the viewer that Glass went on to get his Law degree and become a published Fiction writer. It always seemed present in this review that the story of Stephen Glass was a story of an individual that had picked the right profession, but just not the right job. It is obvious his real talent as a writer was his unbelievable imagination and quick charming wit, both great qualities for “hard news” stories, but maybe better suited for more creative pursuits in Fiction writing.
I think it is always a very American belief that everybody should get a couple of chances in life to be great. The making of mistakes is part of the making of greatness, or at least great character and humility. The Glass and Blair’s of the news community did more right than they did wrong. Their blasphemy raised the eyebrow’s of complacent management to replace incompetent editors, which means in the end, that the news that is offered today is under more factual scrutiny than ever before. Thus, the population of readers is the ultimate winner due to these “cooked” stories raising the overall game of our news community. It also taught a lesson to all future writers that the unethical acts of today will be revealed as a part of your future professional demise if found that your body of work is not a journal of truth!
In the end, I think the “indefensable” acts of unethical journalists should be treated two ways; disciplined and rehabilitated. Much like the story of Glass, the community of journalism should always dismiss and apologize for the lies that sneak into the printed history, but at the same time should always try to not dismiss the innate talent in some of these lost writers.
