Stephen Glass Didn't Pass

Effigy2000 — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 21:03:33 -0800

In 1998, a journalist at The New Republic named Stephen Glass wrote a compelling piece in the influential magazine entitled 'Hack Heaven'. It told the story of how Glass witnessed a 15 year old hacker named Ian Restil being hired by a large Californian computer company named Jukt Micronics at a hacker convention as a security analyst after Restil hacked Jukt's website. But the entire story was, in fact, entirely fictional. Forbes Digital reporter Adam Penenberg exposed Glass as a fraud in his article Lies, Damn Lies and Fiction (mentioned previously) in what was hailed as a breakthrough for internet journalism and which forced The New Republic to issue two apologies to its readers. It also conducted it's own internal investigation into Glass' previously published articles and subsequently determined that at least 27 of 41 stories written by Glass for the magazine contained fabricated material. Some, such as "Don't You D.A.R.E.", contained fabricated quotations and incidents woven in with real reporting. Although Glass was ultimately exposed, he did his best to try and cover his tracks beforehand, going so far as to create a fake website for Jukt Micronics and having his brother act as its chairman in a phone call to his editor. All this would later form the basis for the movie Shattered Glass. Very few of the articles that Glass wrote for The New Republic are still available online. Some of those available include; A Day on the Streets Mrs. Colehill Thanks God For Private Social Security (PDF format) Probable Claus Don't You D.A.R.E. Writing on the Wall Slavery Chic The Young and the Feckless Hack Heaven For further reading, check out A Tissue of Lies: The Stephen R. Glass Index, which provides a complete index of Glass articles with even more links and with known fabrications specially marked.

Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, meet Mitch Albom

bawanaal — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 16:16:48 -0800

Mitch Albom, one of the most decorated sports columnists ever and a best selling author, has been busted for fabricating information in his latest Detroit Free Press column. Albom has apologized, but this has set the sports journalism field abuzz, many happy to the star of the Freep squirm. The President of The National Society of Newspaper Columnists has called the column "bogus" and an "egregious ethical lapse." Others wonder why he wasn't suspended or fired, thinking his status as an author and TV / radio personality is allowing him special favors. The Freep has started an investigation and may look into previous articles. To top it all off, here's the pot calling the kettle black.

Stephen Glass goes down

bkdelong — Tue, 05 Dec 2000 12:46:08 -0800

Glass Redux. I don't know what is going on with reporters lately. Did Stephen Glass start a trend?

MetaFilter posts tagged with stephenglass

Stephen Glass Didn't Pass

Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, meet Mitch Albom

Stephen Glass goes down