Shattered Glass was a really interesting movie about journalist Stephen Glass. He was a writer for The New Republic back in the late 90's, and was eventually found to have "cooked" about a dozen published pieces in the prestigious magazine.
The movie supports the chapter about research that my class is currently reading. It was amazing to me that such an important publication was unaware that one of their top writers was making up stories. It makes you think, how many other things we read are untrue. Yes, a lot of tabloids are mostly BS, but those don't count. Most people who have a clue don't read that stuff for the facts. The New Republic, however, is said to be the "in-flight magazine of Air Force One". Very important people read it. It's pretty embarrassing, actually.
In the movie, Stephen got caught once at the end of his career. This prompted his editor to go back a re-read past contributions from him. In the end they found that many of his contributions were either partially or entirely fabricated. Clearly, they should have done better research while doing their fact checks.
I don't know what Stephen Glass is up to now, but apparently he was very entertaining. In fact, a huge reason why he never got caught was because he was so entertaining. He should consider a career as a fiction writer.
I agree . I am astonished that this posh magazine never even picked up on his gimmicks, so crazy. Especially because he was entertaining, how could they believe his stories too! I think this guy was really mental for doing what he did, I hope he got help. I don't know how much a good lawyer he'd make because I don't know if I could trust the man. Perfect that you said the fiction writer thing because he would be awesome at that. I love how you covered this movie, well said.
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