Since the beginning of this country in 1776 Journalism has been a vital part of our country’s communication system. Journalists would collect and report truthful news and in return would get faithful readers. Being accurate, fair, honest and courageous should always be part of a journalist’s job. The story you are about to read just might surprise you about the people out there reporting our news today.

Take for example a man named Stephen Glass. Glass worked for one of Washington D.C.’s most prominent magazines “The New Republic.” On the surface Glass looked like any average American reporter rushing around to get the latest scoop and even stressing about meeting deadlines but looks can be very deceiving.

Glass was one of the most convincing fabricators that ever lived. Glass in a “60 Minutes” interview admitted for almost every story he had written was a fabrication. To make things convincing he made up people, places, and events. He made up organizations and quotations. Sometimes, he made up entire articles. For example in an article named “Hack Heaven” he made up an organization named Jukt Micronics and a boy named Ian Restill. A supposed master hacker that could leave Bill Gates in tears and Steve Jobs speechless. This One of his most popular articles turned out upon further examination to be complete fantasy. Like so many times before Glass had presented fake notes, business cards everything to make the story believable. In fact it wasn’t until an online version of Forbes Magazine decided to do a follow up on this article that Glass’s web of deception began to unravel. Not able to find credibility in any of his sources they turned to the editor of “The New Republic” at the time Chuck Lane. Lane having every reason to believe Glass asked for the one thing that Glass hadn’t provided a location where the events took place. Glass brought Lane to a large industrial park into a large building filled with escalators hardly a place to have a conference. Eventually Glass ran out of ways of twisting the story his way and admitted it was a fabrication along with many of his other stories. Like a piece about a convention were Monica Lewinski had her own line of condoms and even a piece about an evangelical church that worshiped George W. Bush Senior. Since that time Glass had applied to be a lawyer in the state of New York and California but was rejected on question of his credibility in both instances. He has also written a book called The Fabulist which this time is clearly labeled fiction.

Another disgraceful example of the journalism world is a woman named Janet Cooke a reporter for “The Washington Post” who is also remembered for all the wrong reasons. Although she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 in just her first year of being a reporter she wasn’t as brilliant as she seemed. Just like our friend Stephen Glass she was a great storyteller. In 1980 Cooke published a story with the name of Jimmy’s World. It told a story of an eight year old heroin addict named Jimmy. It was a gripping and upsetting tale that captured the nation’s attention and even the attention of the first lady. This would lead to massive search for the little boy that would come up inconclusive. After this the post demanded a follow up story and the location of the sandy haired boy. It was about that time her former employers exposed the fact that she falsely claimed she had a degree from Vassar College, a master’s degree from the University of Toledo, and had received a journalism award while at the Toledo Blade. While Cooke had attended Vassar for a year, she had only received a bachelor’s degree from Toledo. This added fuel to fire and people asked even more questions so Ms. Cooke finally admitted in a press conference that she had made up Jimmy and his world. Needless to say Ms. Cooke was dismissed by the post and the prize was returned. Ms. Cooke now works at a department store making six dollars an hour and was quoted saying “When I couldn’t find a boy like Jimmy I made one up to satisfy the editors and to get the story I needed.

Our last example is Jayson Blair a reporter for the New York Times whom looked just as normal as our other two examples. Mr. Blair was caught plagiarizing stories from other newspapers. In April 2003 Blair received a call from Times editor Jim Roberts asking him about similarities between a story he had written two days earlier and one written by a newspaper in Texas a couple months earlier. After digging around Roberts uncovered several cases were he had copied quotes and other facts from various stories around the country. This would eventually lead to his resignation and an apology from the times to any and all papers affected. This would cause a race issue at The Times which is still unresolved.

In short there have been many great journalists but it would appear ethics have slowly drifted away I personally think if we all work together we can learn from other journalists mistakes and maybe journalism can be like it was way back when. Maybe there could even be another Clark Kent sometime in the near future