Billy Ray’s 2003 film Shattered Glass tells the true story of Stephen Glass, the youngest writer at the New Republic from 1995-1998, and how he was caught fabricating the majority of his stories. This ultimately led to the charming and successful man’s demise as a reporter.

Glass was extremely popular among his colleagues and boss Chuck Lane at the New Republic. He wrote extremely interesting stories that always seemed to come up at the right time and right place. However, one particular story led to his whole world crashing down as Forbes Magazine attempted to follow up on it and realized the story did not add up. Glass had fabricated the entire story, from creating a fake website to lying about a conference he attended at a hotel. Glass’s boss Chuck at first tried to defend Glass but eventually could not any longer as further investigations into Glass’s work revealed complete fabrication of this story and many other stories he had written, including dates that didn’t make any sense, unlikely events and fake names of sources and companies. Glass was ultimately fired, and the end credits reveal he went on to study law full time.

While the two movies I saw before this, Spotlight and All the President’s Men, showcased the power of journalism to uncover the truth, Shattered Glass emphasized how journalism means nothing without the truth. I really enjoyed this movie because it showed that journalism is equally about integrity as it is about good writing. As we’ve learned in class, journalists are obligated and bound to the truth, and even though Glass wrote his stories in a journalistic manner, he was not being a journalist by fabricating facts.