Profession journalist/professional liar doesn't offend the Media:
At New Republic, the Agony of Deceit
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 12, 1998; Page B01
The New Republic has finished sifting through the journalistic wreckage left
behind by Stephen Glass, and the findings aren't pretty: Two-thirds of the
41 stories he wrote for the magazine were at least partially fabricated.
Six articles -- three of which the magazine had already acknowledged as
fake -- "could be considered entirely or nearly entirely made up," the New
Republic says in next week's issue. Many others were "a blend of fact and
fiction. . . . We offer no excuses for any of this. Only our deepest
apologies to all concerned."
Glass did not contest the findings and apologized this week in a private
letter to Editor Charles Lane and owner and Editor in Chief Martin Peretz,
Lane said yesterday.
Since being fired as associate editor last month, Glass, 25, has told two
acquaintances that he is under a suicide watch, accompanied by someone
at all times. "I'm going through this process of trying to figure myself out,"
he told one. During a conversation with the other acquaintance, he burst
into tears.
Glass's attorney, Gerson Zweifach, said his client had no immediate plans
to offer a public explanation. He said Glass "has asked me to cooperate
with the New Republic and George and provide them with any information
they need to make whatever they write about his work as accurate as
possible." George magazine has said Glass used two fabricated quotes in a
profile of Vernon Jordan.
"We are doing what we can to set the record straight and lay out the facts
so people can make up their own minds," said Lane, who examined
Glass's pieces with six other editors. "We have never tried to deny that
anything was wrong." He blamed Glass's successful fakery on
"malfunctioning BS detectors on the part of the editors and a person who
we trusted who turns out not to be worthy of trust. . . . Hey, we should
have done a better job. There's no way around that."
Michael Kelly, the New Republic's editor for most of 1997, said: "I take
full responsibility for the flaws in judgment that allowed this to happen, and
I apologize to those whose reputations were tarnished or who were
otherwise hurt by these fictions." Added Kelly, now at the National
Journal: "It's obviously an immense betrayal by a writer and a serious
failure on the part of the editors -- I'm referring to myself here -- who
edited that writer."
The sheer breadth of Glass's deceptions is stunning, his stories bursting
with too-good-to-be-true anecdotes that were just that.
The New Republic offered several examples of Glass's fiction writing in the
27 discredited pieces since late 1996. In "Peddling Poppy," an account of
a Hofstra University conference on the Bush presidency, Glass invented
the following: "The First Church of George Herbert Walker Christ," "Mary
Ung" of the "Committee for the Former President's Integrity," and "a small
sky-diving industry newsletter" called "Jump Now."
(Glass had "Ung" begging reporters to cover a "sad little tableau" of five
children in wheelchairs -- one white, two Asian, two black -- meant to
symbolize the Americans With Disabilities Act. When the white child
leaves, "Ung" says, "Oh, my God. I need a white person," then asks Glass
to get in the wheelchair and hold the American flag.)
In "Don't You D.A.R.E.," an examination of a controversial anti-drug
program, Glass "fabricated some of the persons who purportedly had
negative experiences" with D.A.R.E. These included "James, a television
news producer" and "Daniel, a young protestor at an Illinois college" (who
"asked that his last name not be used, since he is up for tenure . . . and
nervous about adverse publicity"). Also nonexistent were an "NBC
employee" and a "Justice Department official."
"Anatomy of a Policy Fraud," while containing largely "valid reporting" on
the Clinton administration's crime initiatives, used such made-up sources as
the "Cops & Justice Foundation," a supposed Republican poll on crime,
"Donny Tye, a former California police officer," and a "senior Justice
staffer."
The magazine offered few details about the six articles deemed to be
wholly or largely fabricated. In "Clutch Situation," soon after the Monica
Lewinsky story broke, Glass described one White House intern (who
"begged not to be identified") whipping out a napkin with President
Clinton's autograph to impress women. He also described a scene at Cities
in Adams-Morgan: "Three twentysomethings sit hunched over a small
table, taking frequent drags on Camel Lights, nursing vodka martinis, and
feverishly speculating about the details of President Clinton's sex life."
In "All Wet," an essay on global warming, Glass invented such groups as
"Climate Lookout," "Truth in Science" and the "Association for the
Advancement of Sound Water Policy." In an ironic twist, he said he had
called the association "and asked them to explain the dangerously low
rainfall in Werty, Iowa -- a fictitious town."
This plot-within-a-plot device also surfaced in "Ratted Out," about private
eyes who investigate employees' bosses. Glass says he called one firm and
"made the scenario as implausible as possible, so no one would get into
trouble. The woman who answered the phone, Wendy, said she would
take down the information. . . . I told her I worked for the Amish
Agriculture Cooperative in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. . . . 'I've seen it real,
real bad,' I said almost tearfully." He called another firm "under an alias"
and asked for "a background check on my boss -- whom I identified as
Stephen Glass." Through a case of mistaken identity, he said, he had been
accused of soliciting a prostitute in 1968, which was before he was born.
Also fabricated, said the magazine, was "Spring Breakdown," a
much-debated account of beer, marijuana and sex at a conservative
political conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. ("In the get-naked room,
everyone disrobes immediately, without a hint of embarrassment. One
couple fondles each other in the corner. A muscular man, apparently
hallucinating, prances around the room like a ballet dancer. A woman
locks herself in the bathroom, crying and shouting out the name 'Samuel.' ")
Glass, the magazine says, made up the "accounts of drug use, drinking, and
sexual harassment by young conference attendees."
How could all this have happened? Lane says Glass "deliberately deceived
the fact-checkers" with forged notes, fabricated documents, fake press
releases and, in one case, a bogus Web site. In other instances, Lane said,
Glass told fact-checkers that "certain sources he had were so deep and so
dark that they'd asked not to be called back" -- a tactic he also used at
George.
After Glass wrote "Hack Heaven," the piece that ultimately led to his
downfall, Lane insisted that Glass drive him to Bethesda to find the site of a
Sunday hackers' conference described in the story. Lane says Glass took
him to an office building lobby where he insisted the event had taken place,
even after the security guard said the building had been closed that Sunday.
Finally, Glass admitted he hadn't been at the conference but still maintained
it was not imaginary.
Friends say Glass, who had been in seclusion at his parents' suburban
Chicago home, is back in Washington and recently took final exams at
Georgetown Law School, where he is attending night classes. Vanity Fair
is working on a profile, and two screenwriters are said to be interested in
the rights to his story.
On the night he was fired, Glass told Kelly, his former boss, that he had
been dismissed for an "exceedingly minor" mistake in his latest story, Kelly
said. The next day, Kelly said, Glass called to admit "that he had done
terrible things" -- but still insisted "he had not made anything up" in the
story about the beer-swilling, pot-smoking young conservatives.
Lane sees one clear lesson from the debacle: "You've got to be more
careful about blind quotes."
washingtonpost.com
Lefties and the Media love to criticize Drudge, who erred by mistake, but are mute when a liberal, "professional journalist" errs by design. Why? Because they share the same ideology and operate the same way. |
