Still Shattered: Revisiting the Stephen Glass Case

Den Baranda
Sep 9, 2018 · 6 min read
Hayden Christensen as Stephen Glass in Shattered Glass (2003) image courtesy of intofilm.org

Author’s note: This piece served as my final paper for my Press Ethics class during my senior year in journalism school. I co-wrote it with one of my best friends, who also happened to be my thesis partner, Marielle Santos.

When Stephen Glass walked the once great halls of The New Republic (TNR) newsroom, he was seen as a sort of demigod. He was writing not only for TNR, but also for other respected and well-known publications such as Rolling Stone, Harper, and even the late John F. Kennedy Jr.’s George. He was young, a part time law student at Georgetown University, and his voice was in demand — interesting stories always had an odd way of being thrown Glass’ way.

However, it would later on be revealed that these were not mere coincidences. Glass had been faking and orchestrating nearly every story he had published. To this day, the Glass case is still regarded as the “most sustained fraud in modern journalism.” From telephone psychics to conversations between young politicians on Capitol Hill, Stephen Glass seemed to be writing about them all until The New Republic ran his now infamous story entitled “Hack Heaven.” In the said article, which was albeit ambitious if one would take the time to reread it and contemplate the things that had transpired in retrospect, Glass tells the story of Ian Restil, a 15-year-old computer hacker who managed to break into the mainframe of a supposed big time software company by the name of Jukt Micronics. However, instead of turning in the hacker to the authorities, Jukt rewarded the young fiend by recruiting him and even paying him. One would think Glass would have stopped the narrative there, but he didn’t. He would further write about how the young hacker managed to land an agent, hosted a party involving an association of hackers, and that state authorities had to send out public service announcements warning people to turn criminals like these in rather than employing them.

image courtesy of todayspicynews.com

At the time of the article’s conception, there was still a wide discrepancy between print and digital media in terms of public credibility. As explained by Adam Penenberg, the man behind the exposing of Stephen Glass; or shall we say the man who “shattered Glass,” digital journalists were viewed as only nearly at par with gossip columnists. According to him, print loyalists were never tired of constantly reminding them of their inferiority when compared to them and how their small staffs were all dying of pressure from tighter deadlines. This however never swayed him. Penenberg was a writer for Forbes Digital Tool, now FORBES.com, at the time “Hack Heaven” came out. His beat involved technology and software, and after Glass’ story hit the stands, he was called into his editor’s office to be told off. How had he been out scooped when it was his duty to stay on top of things? Admittedly for Penenberg, the technology beat was a rough fort to hold and after that meeting with his editor, he found himself reading Glass’ article and by the end of it, he was confused.

He had never heard of any hackers’ convention nor of a software company named Jukt Micronics. From there, the series of cross checking begun and the rest, as they say, is history. “It was simply a mystery that I wanted to solve,” Penenberg said in an email interview. “When I read the article I was amazed that I had never heard of anything in it — not the phenomenon of hackers hiring agents, not companies paying extortion instead of calling law enforcement, not the government agency he listed, not the hacker convention — nothing. So I figured I must be a pretty bad reporter if I didn’t know any of this, so I figured I’d better find out fast! That’s what led me to start searching for the company, Jukt Micronics.”

Doing quick searches on the Internet was quite different back then. Manual queries took a little longer and our dear friend Google has yet to be born into existence. No, Penenberg and his team had to utilize Yahoo and had to track the obscure waters of private MSN websites to fact check Glass’ article. Their efforts, of course as previously stated, would create a seemingly ripple effect. A quick social media harvest on Twitter would reveal that the Stephen Glass story is still to this day a staple subject matter in press ethics classes all across the globe. Even Penenberg himself admits to still be receiving interview requests regarding this case nearly two decades later.

Glass’ attempt at redemption seem to be far-fetched. Almost two decades earlier, immediately after Forbes and the New Republic proved that the hacker story was fraudulent, it was disclosed that 27 out of 41 of his by-lined pieces had been wholly or partially fabricated, hence leading to his dismissal from the New Republic. After being fired from the magazine, Glass had vanished for a while to focus on earning his law degree in Georgetown University before eventually passing the New York State Bar exam in 2000 and the California State Bar exam in 2009 in an attempt to launch a new career as an attorney. However, he was denied a law license from both New York and California due to the 1998 scandal that disclosed his fabrications in more than 40 pieces he had written for the New Republic and other publications. In a 35-page decision that was release by the California State Court in January 2014, Glass was accused of still continuing his series of deception ultimately scratching his hopes of becoming a lawyer. The court found that Glass still hadn’t come clean about many of the articles he falsified.

Today, Glass now works for the California law firm Carpenter, Zuckerman and Rowley as “Director of Special Projects” where he helps clients prepare to tell their personal injury stories to trial. At the time of this article’s writing, Glass currently declines interview requests due to the recent passing of his wife.

In this era of social media and fake news, it is important, now more than ever, to revisit the story of Steve Glass and how he, for a time, was able to get away with his lies. With all the resources readily available to us, Adam Penenberg notes that it is not impossible for another Glass to mushroom in the media practice. “You see “fake news” almost everywhere you look these days. Soon you’ll see videos in which a person speaking right never have actually uttered those words. The fake news is getting better — more convincing — all the time. What is true is that today it is easier than ever to plagiarize and fabricate stories, since information is so readily available. But it’s also easier to catch. So we’ll see how this all plays out in the coming years,” he warns.

Thus, it is the responsibility of journalists and other media practitioners to speak the truth. Penenberg notes that despite the “handwringing that afflicts our profession, there is great journalism being performed.” He adds that if you subscribe to the 80–20 rule, where 80% of everything is “crap” but 20% is good, then it stands to reason there is way more great stuff published today with the aid of the digital revolution. Unfortunately though, he adds that there is way “more crap you have to wade through to get to the good stuff.”

Den Baranda

Leave the saving of the world to the men? I don't think so.

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