Shattered Glass: who wins fact or fiction? (Part 4)

Say truth or lie

Similarly to H. de Burgh, American professor of journalism D. Gillmor writes that there are four pillars of good journalism: thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and transparency. These notions have a goal – objectivity. When a journalist obeys the rules of objective writing, only then he can be called as a professional journalist. “The best reporters I know always want to make one more call, check with one more source“, said D. Gillmor.

Talking about Stephen Glass, he was one of the best his powerful country journalists but he not even considered about objectivity or any other forms of it. Conversely, he avoided real facts and fabricated events, people, situations. N. Davies in his book highlights the fact that journalism with all daily news has become merely ‘churnalism’, applying minimal or no emphasis on producing good quality journalistic material for print and broadcast alike. But then what are chances for investigative journalism to survive against rapidly changing world of news, while even daily news is in bad situation?

Nowadays a lot of information is written on the original ideas because people quickly get bored by facts. Also, this is a reason, why Stephen Glass created facts. He couldn’t coup with dullness and unexciting, dry articles writing. Many literary figures were involved in Glass‘s journalism: metaphors, imaginative comparisons, hyperboles to create colorful articles. It is said that investigative reporters should seek the real investigative journalism internal goods: truth telling, objectivity, thorough source checking and so on. But maybe all these goods are only God terms and to follow these things every time is impossible? After all, journalists rely on their own ethics and they need to ask themselves, if they are acting in the right way. 

In conclusion, it is obvious that investigative journalism has an important role to play in our society. Sadly, there is a problem: only a small proportion of society really appreciates investigative journalism. The most popular papers are tabloids. Nowadays journalists must be trained to interview, to gather real facts and at the same time to produce a story in attractive and accessible for readers, listeners or viewers way. When they read article, they want not only careful and scrupulous facts but that it would be interesting as well. 

Talking about Shattered Glass, this film manages to highlight the history of journalism and to turn the action into a tale of moral values, where traditional principles of investigative journalism (thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and transparency) triumph over its more toxic instincts (the distort of facts, fiction making and so on). After some persuasions Stephan Glass approved the screenplay of this movie because he felt that the story was important enough to be told, in spite of the embarrassment he felt. The power of the film lies in the questions that it forces us to ask especially about the way we receive and accept truth. Also, it shows that we need to write not only between the lines but between the lies as well.