Broken Glass

When journalists like Stephen Glass break credibility many people are affected. From the journalist themselves to the people who read the magazine there are a lot of people who are affected by the article and therefore affected by the article’s credibility. The movie “Shattered Glass” goes through how Glass is proved to have “cooked” his stories or made them up, but the movie does not show all of the people that are hurt by his actions.

When a journalist’s credibility is broken, the journalist is hurt the most out of everybody that is affected. Since the journalist was proved to have lied about a story, he/she would have a very tough time getting hired by any other paper. Once something like that has happened, it is hard to even get looked at by another paper because anyone is just one internet search away from finding out about the past. Just one story that is found to be fictitious can ruin a journalist’s career forever.

The magazine or newspaper can also be hurt by a made up story. Even when a paper has just one author that is proved to be not credible people can be hurt. When a reader finds out that they have been reading a made up story when they believed it was truthful they are immediately turned off to that paper. This would hurt the paper company because they would be losing customers and possibly advertisers. Whenever a writer makes a mistake the paper has to protect its employee. When a writer makes a big mistake, like making up a story, the company has to issue apologies to their readers, find new writers, and try to fix their shattered image. This hurts the paper because it is doing something other than reporting the news and making sure the story is right.

The readers are hurt when a journalist’s credibility is broken because most readers trust what they are reading. When this trust is broken, a reader could find it hard to trust the paper, or any paper for that matter. The reader is then left to wonder if anything they had read before was the truth, or if they were all made up stories. When a reader’s trust is broken, he/she does not buy newspapers and does not trust the news. When this happens the reader becomes un-informed which is a problem in itself.

The advertisers are hurt in this process because they are associated with the paper and the phony journalist. When a reader sees an advertisement in the newspaper, and then finds out that the some of the stories were made up, then the reader could have a bad impression of that company. This could affect the company’s sales numbers and potentially close a company down if they were a big enough supporter of the paper.

Many people are affected when a journalist’s credibility is broken. From the journalist, to the paper, to the advertisers, and the readers; there are many groups that feel the aftereffect of a serious act like Glass’s. Credibility is something that is earned but cannot be gained back. A journalist’s job is to report the news and never to become part of the news.