These first two readings, "Shattered Glass" from Vanity Fair and "Ethics: Sticky Issues in Gumshoe Journalism", raise the question about ethic in journalism. Both of them describe a side of journalism where the question of privacy and the truth of facts and consequences writen in articles. One is dealing with the amazing story of a young journalist who mostly wrote fake stories for the biggest newspapers and magazines. The other one explains the evolution of technical gadgets for picking up information for writing articles.
I called this article "Facts and consequences", because this is the main idea which is coming out from these two articles. How do journalists use facts ? How do they write facts ? And what are the consequences ?
Journalists can invent, create, relay stories. The thing is, the readers mostly trust them. Their job is really ambiguous, they have to write with the most sincerity as possible without revealing any private details, which could be a tough decision sometimes. Between the truth and the lie, the gap is really small. Stephen Glass is the perfect definition of the difficulty of being a good journalist. His story fascinated me. The way he created his character as a perfect journalist who was trying to get the attention from all of his coleagues. Whith his own imagination he wrote articles with an unexpected quality for a young man. He was able to write for the most important magazines and newspapers in the USA, and a political journal hired him, which means a lot. But in this fabulous story, Glass didn't even thought about consequences. Why ? Because he thought that non of his coleagues could find the truth. For some articles he mixed real facts with the fake one. Due to his no sense of responsability, he put the editor in a very bad situation with his partners and the readers as well.
The other thing is about privacy, and the technics that journalists use to get their content for the article. The question is, where does the privacy start and finish ? Sometimes, publishing just a picture of someone diying at the hospital can be a relevant element or just an abuse of private life. That's why it is really hard for journalists to write the perfect article.
Just for information, I saw the movie about Stephen Glass titled "Shattered Glass". It is an entertaining movie, and basically what we've read is what I saw!
