"Shattered Glass": Trials of Journalism

Taken from https://prssausf.org/2015/03/09/media-monday-shattered-glass-and-unethical-journalism/

Billy Ray’s film “Shattered Glass” unravels the story of a young writer through his self-inflicted trials in his journalistic career. The movie progresses through the narration of Stephen Glass, a writer for The New Republic Magazine, and contributor to other publications, as he talks to a high school class about his experiences as a journalist. Through the processes of a publication to the truths he had realized, he enlightens the class on the world of journalism and what people are like in the industry. He shared that there are “many show offs in journalism”, talking about the lack of essence of some writers. In his dialogue, he gave emphasis to the craft of journalism and how it is about “pursuing the truth”. His creative stories were vibrant with unique subjects and had interesting plots to compliment them, which aided him in his work, and gained more traction for his articles. “What you write is read by people in power, you can influence political powers and how they think,” Glass states, talking about the power of journalism to politics. The movie portrays Glass as a friendly and well liked man in the office, which made his appeal to his co-workers and audience stronger. As his stories gained more traction, fact checkers raise suspicion towards the validity of his stories. Shallow sources and uncanny details become more clear across his stories. As this develops, the articles of Glass had been verified as fictional, with fabricated people, numbers, companies and areas that do not actually exist.

Taken from https://www.headstuff.org/entertainment/film/journalism-on-film-3-shattered-glass/

The movie portrays journalism as a challenging industry of pursuing truth and still being relevant and reliable to the public. With this struggle, it had shown the ethics that journalists tend to defy in order to compose stories. The first case of an unethical practice of Stephen Glass raises during his act of assumption towards an overlooked detail, reflecting that his assumption of the environment he was reporting had been misinforming. As the film progressed with suspicion towards Glass, it becomes evident that the pressure of composing great articles greatly influences the ethical practices that are followed by journalists just to gain popularity. Stephen Glass had lost his direction as a respectable and truthful journalist and was consumed into the popularity his fictional stories had gained. Perhaps publishing fabricated details did not seem like a threat to him because of the fact checking platforms they had before, where in depth research was not as accessible. Beyond his misdeed towards his own publication, Glass had been a hypocrite, preaching to the youth about pursuing the truth but choosing to write fiction on stories that would capture and show the readers what they want to read rather than what they need to know.

As the film concluded, Glass was fired from his position as a contributor. This had come off as a tragedy to his workplace, where he was well-liked by the people he had spent his time with. They realize through Stephen’s behavior that these writers and editors were not able to seek criticality towards other people’s content because of their liking towards him. As Glass was removed from all the publications, they had released an article negating all his previous work, acknowledging the false information that was fed to the public.

Taken from: http://blogs.stlawu.edu/jenniferfinan/movie-responses/

The issue the movie presents on fabrication is frustrating and incredibly upsetting, as these cases are still present in reality. With the access to information that society is presented with, it could be imagined that fact checking would be practiced much more by individuals. Instead, platforms such as social media that provide news, have also become a great source of fake news and fabricated details. In some cases, individuals have used journalism to benefit their name and have used it as traction to influence the public negatively, rather than using their name as a tool for the true essence of the craft. The movie offers the need for criticality towards the news and information consumed, learning to differentiate fact from fiction.

“Shattered Glass” urges the need for fact checking and for practicing ethics in journalism, showing the need for these in educating and sharing information with the public. The consequences of misinformation takes power away from individuals who could use this to build their knowledge of the world around them, reflecting the ability of journalism to empower others through words.