Not A Glass Act

3 Pages 674 Words

Do you believe everything that you read? Well, maybe you shouldn’t.

After writing the article “Hack Heaven”, it has been discovered that Stephen Glass, a young writer from The New Republic has been making up quotes, people, places, events, and sometimes whole stories. Glass knew how to deceive his editors since he was one once himself. He wrote phony notes, made phony websites, and phone numbers.

Stephen Glass, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, started working at The New Republic in 1995.

The lying started when he was writing a story for The New Republic shortly after he began working there. During an interview with Glass he said, “Like a stock graph, there’s going to be exceptions in this. But the general trend of the stories is that they started out with a few made up details and quotes. And granted a few too many, of course. But a few. And then they progressed into stories that were completely fabricated. Just completely made up out of whole cloth.”

“Hack Heaven” was about a 15 year old, Ian Restil, who hacked into a software company called Jukt Micronics and was then offered a job by the company with the help of his agent, Joe Hiert. The article also said that there was a radio advertisement in Nevada asking “Would you hire a shoplifter to watch the cash register? Please don’t deal with hackers.”

After reading the article, Adam Penenberg, a writer at Forbes Digital, tried to trace Jukt Micronics. He didn’t find a website, a record of the company ever paying taxes, and it wasn’t listed under any of California’s area codes. There was no evidence of the company ever existing.

Forbes notified Charles Lane, the executive editor for The New Republic from 1997-1999, and told him that they were having a hard time proving every fact. Lane then told Glass that he needed a list of all of the sources and how to reach them. Glass returned with the phone numbers and e-m...