Shattered Glass (2003)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Shattered Glass (2003) – B. Ray

Based on the true story of discredited journalist Stephen Glass who fabricated stories for The New Republic in the 1990s.  Hayden Christensen plays Glass as a needy character, clearly seeking attention and approval, but somehow also cocky and manipulative.  He has clearly endeared some of his officemates to him (Chloe Sevigny, Melanie Lynskey) and that may have helped him to pass various stages in the editorial process (fact-checking, in particular) with less scrutiny than needed.  His editors, Hank Azaria and then Peter Sarsgaard, are more suspicious but the house-of-cards does not come tumbling down until a reporter at an online magazine (Steve Zahn) stumbles onto the fraud. As directed by screenwriter Billy Ray, it feels like a thriller at times, as the clues and lame defences start turning up. Perhaps it also wants to be a character study but we never really get any insight into Glass’s motives, although perhaps they are pretty transparent.  I’m reminded of a similar case in my own area, where a Dutch social psychologist, Diederik Stapel, admitted to having faked dozens of research studies, published in the top journals, after having been caught by other researchers who found his data analyses too good to be true (but only after they had passed muster through the peer review process and with unwitting or negligent consent of famous co-authors and grad students).  In his memoirs (yes, really!), he claimed that he could not resist the adulation that came with success and claimed to be sorry. At the time, pundits suggested that our publish-or-perish culture invites such desperate acts – but not much has changed in the intervening years. There are lessons for us all in these morality plays.