Thoughts on Shattered Glass

Shattered Glass is a film about Stephen Glass. Glass was a star writer for the New Republic, a news magazine based in Washington D.C. with a long history. The New Republic editors/writers might have considered the magazine a step above Time or Newsweek.  The New Republic did not use photos in their stories. Glass wrote fantastic stories. 

His last story for the magazine was Hack Heaven about a teenage hacker who was hired by a company after he hacked them. The online magazine Forbes Digital Tool wanted to do a follow up story, feeling surprised that the New Republic got the story instead of them (Forbes Digital Tool). A reporter for Forbes tries to do a follow up story but he cannot confirm anything from the story.  Well, the reporter did confirm the existence of the state of Nevada. 

The reporter and editor from Forbes calls the New Republic and Glass and his editor Charles Lane take the call. Questions are asked and Glass provides unconvincing answers. Glass says he is starting to believe he was duped.

Lane replaced Michael Kelly, and Kelly was popular with the staff. Lane was not. Glass was popular with the other writers because he seemed friendly and modest about his work. He would give a pitch for a story and (in the movie at least) make it a performance but end with a sentence like “maybe it is not worth continuing.” Glass tried to leverage his popularity against Lane. 

Hayden Christian was good as Glass. He seems like a nice guy but as things start to unravel, there are hints that he isn’t that nice. Peter Starsgard was good as Charles Lane, the editor who realizes that there is a serious problem after a trip to where the hacker convention supposedly happened. The other actors are good too. 

Glass is fired and the staff of the magazine finds that 27 of the 41 stories Glass wrote for them were at least partially fabricated.  At one point another staffer says that photographs would have saved the magazine because the lack of them would been a sign that something was wrong. I am not sure that photographs would have saved the magazine. 

The movie doesn’t give an answer for why Glass did it. Maybe that was good.



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