It has been a long time since All the President's Men (1976), so if you're a fan of journalism drama, you'll want to see Shattered Glass. It tells the true story of The New Republic reporter Stephen Glass, who confessed to faking all or parts of 27 of the 41 stories he filed, not counting high-priced articles he wrote for the likes of Rolling Stone and George.
The twentysomething Glass was among a staff of youthful journalists charged with giving the liberal magazine a contemporary spin. His exposure and firing were only recently eclipsed by the lies discovered in the reportage of Jayson Blair of The New York Times. How did such a cancer invade the highest echelons of our free press?
Shattered Glass attempts to examine the problem, not by portraying the dark psychopathology of the perpetrator, but through the eyes of the editor who brings him down.
Writer and first-time director Billy Ray presents us with a simple scenario. Among the young and gifted of TNR's staff is colorful Glass (Star Wars' Hayden Christensen), whose stories, such as one about a convention of cyber-pirates, become exemplary for the journal's new direction.
The staff is mobilized by editor Mike Kelly (Hank Azaria), whose zeal to coach may have clouded his fact-checking. Kelly is fired and Glass' colleague Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard) gets his job. Lane is called to account for the sources in Glass' hacker saga after an online reporter cries hoax. He discovers that Glass is a pathological liar who has invented almost everything he's written. Glass, still in denial, is fired and ethical journalism returns to TNR.
If this sounds like the movie is a tad undramatic, that's accurate. The script is based on a Vanity Fair article, and any dramatic license would be inappropriate.
But Shattered Glass is a briskly paced, entertaining and informative movie. It even has a great prophetically comic punch line from, of all people, the magazine's motherly receptionist, that reverberated with me as I exited the screening.