Shattered Glass
Shattered Glass This was the best movie ever. I just have to say that. It almost boggles the mind exactly how in depth the journalistic verification process goes in an effort to bring the public true information; the amount of editors it takes, how many revisions the writer makes and the number of times each article is read and reread before print. There were many reasons why Stephen Glass was able to get away with his falsified articles and made up sources.
The movies gives us the reason that he was “entertaining” as Chuck put it and everyone just liked him and chose to believe that he wrote good, legit stories. That was biases on all the editors and peer writers’ part. The reason he got through the source screen process was because he was able to produce phone numbers, web sites, addresses and anything else they wanted about the information and people he was referring to.
The problem was they trusted him and didn’t look for sources independently of the writer himself, which if they had, like the small online newspaper did, they would’ve found nothing and found the problem sooner. Peer review in journalism is essential because not only does it provide outside insight on how the overall article is and fixes grammar and syntax errors but it there’s also people like Stephen that double checked the writer’s facts. He did this with a coworker and basically shredded the article by pointing out every mistake in it.
Shattered Glass brings up many other themes we’ve covered in class besides the verification process. Freedom of the press was brought up when the small online newspaper was going to reveal how The New Republic published a fake story which would ruin it yet the online newspaper still had every right to do so. The mission of the press is to bring the news to the public, to alert, divert and connect. It must bring the public the truth which means there can be no assumptions and no inferences.
Stephen Glass managed to publish many articles full of assumptions based on his research on the places he claimed he was personally at such as the Hacker’s Conference. Many of the things he asserted in his articles were very powerful and were able to influence large companies and politicians. After Hack Heaven was published, software companies across the country began to search out hackers to hire as security consultants. The movie was very informative and extremely interesting; I didn’t even realize it was a documentary until it was over. It should seriously be shown in class time.
