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.

Shattered Glass: Investigative journalism as a ”muckraking-lite” (Part 3)

Tabloid-styled journalism

As it was mentioned before, investigative reporters are not satisfied about the situation of twenty-first century investigative journalism. Journalists must have a purpose to be free and fair watchdogs of society, but professors of journalism also state that now there are many tabloid-styled stories wrongly labeled “investigative”, which purpose is to entertain. These entertainment-oriented articles are what another investigative journalist J. H. Dygert has called “muckraking-lite”.

Shattered Glass: principles of traditional investigative journalism (Part 2)

Traditional investigative journalism

When we are talking about thorough facts checking, we are usually mentioning investigative journalism. While watching the movie Shattered Glass probably a majority of people raise a question: how healthy is investigative journalism when our practice moves into twenty-first century? Despite the fact that today there are more journalists involved in investigative reporting than ever before, many investigative reporters are not satisfied about the situation. Before proceeding in finding answers to this question, it is essential to define what investigative journalism is and what the main values of it are.

Shattered Glass: read between the lies of investigative journalism (part 1)

Theatrical poster

It is known that when filmmakers want to reflect journalism, they usually transform journalists into some kind of heroic action characters. For instance in a movie The Insider we can see a reporter who demolishes extremely bad conspiracy or in All the President's Men two enthusiastic journalists made a corrupt president to be compulsorily retired. Not in a few movies journalists are depicted as life-savers. In this regard, Shattered Glass is a unique movie which describes the story of a journalist on a far more human scale (it is also seen on a trailer). The film is based on real events and it develops the world of pressured national political journalism.