"Shattered Glass"

In the year 2003, the movie “Shattered Glass” was released by writer and director, Billy Ray. The movie’s events revolved on the processes of pre-published to published work released on a magazine entitled, New Republic Magazine in Washington D.C. The American magazine company debuted its first publication in 1914, and years later it still pursues to share stories on sports, entertainment, economy, and news. The average age of the 15 workers in the magazine was 26 years old, and Stephen Glass, at 24 years old, was the youngest editor. What made Stephen Glass even more of a character were his many accomplishments. He was a contributor in the Harper’s Magazine, George, and Rolling Stone. To top it all off he had a striking personality, overall charm, and overbearing ambition. In the beginning of the movie, he was greatly admired by the journalism students of his former Journalism professor, Mrs. Duke, his co-workers, and the readers of his articles on the New Republic. But this admiration did not last until a fierce clash of the ash with integrity and deception occurred.

The movie clearly highlighted on the importance of fact checking, journalistic integrity, and responsible reporting. Stephen Glass was always caught in the middle with his reports because he always missed little notes of information in the articles he published unto the magazine. Glass was called out by Michael Kelly, one of the editors in the New Republic, on reporting the wrong fact of minibars existing during the CPAC Conference hotel incident. The article, entitled “Spring Breakdown”, did cover the events of the conference but it also covered each and every behind the scenes matter. Matters that had prostitutes and drunkenness were in the picture. In resolution to this matter, Glass admitted his mistake to his editor at the time, Michael Kelly, and offered to file a resignation due to his error but Kelly denied. After "Spring Breakdown" incident in Glass' journey as a journalist, that didn’t stop his career and ambition. In fact, he was just getting started.

The biggest and faultiest article released by Glass was entitled, “Hack Heaven”. The story stated that in a computer convention, he witnessed a hacker sign a deal about hacking with a Jukt Micronics, a computer company for a million dollars. A little after Glass basked in fame for his appealing and eye-catching article written about the whole hacking computer issue, the truth behind his lies caught up to his feet. Adam Penenberg, the tech-savvy man from Forbes, another notable magazine discussed matters with Lane. The article was filled with fake dates and websites, non-existent names and email addresses, and misdriven turn of events in the story. Through the thorough process of confirming and reconfirming facts, and slowly placing through every nook and cranny of the story, Glass’ article, “Hacked Heaven” got thrown into a dump for it was a clear example of deception and misinformation.

The greatest dilemma of Stephen Glass was his reputation vs. truth. He was on a roll with his accomplishments as a journalist and being a charming man as bonus. But being a journalist is not just getting one’s name at the byline. It’s about the behavior. It's about having sufficient knowledge on matters that go beyond writing. When it comes to comprehending information with data science and numbers, a journalist would have to know the language of this because it comes with the skill of fact-checking and verifying what's to be published on paber for the public to read.

In the Laws and Ethics of Journalism as explained by Harrower, there are “Seven Deadly Sins” namely, deception, conflict of interest, bias, fabrication theft, burning a source, and plagiarism. Glass would have to pay a great whole of indulgences to make up for his faulty journalistic acts in the New Republic Magazine.