06/03/2026
Regardless of how JOURNALISM is perceived these days, it was and should be a source for integrity and truth.
This article explores how the media got exploited, and does some good self-reflection along the way.
"He had a way of making you feel good about yourself. That was one reason why everybody liked Steve Glass. And he told you what you wanted to hear. Steve knew that I was irritated by a steady stream of catty items the New Republic had run about George, and so he fed me a steady stream of bilious gossip about TNR. This editor was a pompous bore; no one took that writer seriously. I felt dirty for enjoying the gossip, but I never asked him to stop dishing it.
Before I could reach Steve to discuss the Podhoretz piece, we all found out how he had been getting such great stuff. He was making it up. A Forbes.com journalist named Adam Penenberg tried to follow up on a Glass story in the New Republic, only to find that none of it was real. In short order, TNR editor Chuck Lane fired Glass, and subsequent investigations showed that Steve’s fabrications went way back, numbering in the dozens. At George, the Jordan piece simply blew apart like a dandelion in a strong wind. The day the news broke, I did some hasty rechecking of facts. In Glass’ notes, I found the names of his lawyer sources, the ones Glass had asked us not to call because they feared talking to anyone but him. A bewildered night operator at Vernon Jordan’s law firm informed me that there were no lawyers there by that name. The Podhoretz profile was also bunk. We fired Glass, too.
Our head fact checker, a hardworking young man who took his job seriously, who needed his job — the kind of guy working his way up the journalistic ladder whom Glass had nimbly leapfrogged over — was distraught, terrified that he would get fired but even more devastated because to him, the idea of truth in reporting mattered, and Glass’ conduct was something he simply could not fathom."
https://www.salon.com/2003/05/17/glass_2/
I was one of the magazine editors deceived by journalist Stephen Glass during his reign of error and lies. His fictionalized memoir, "The Fabulist," is supposed to be an apology. I don't buy it.
