Shattered Lies

When people lie, they are covering up the truth. Whether that lie is to cover up

something bad, or to cover up something good that is meant to be a surprise, is up to

the person telling the lie. There are many different reasons that people lie, but there is

always a cost to their lying.

My experience with lying occurred in 5th grade, when I lied about completing my

homework for a couple weeks, just so I could go swimming at the community center. At

this time, I went to St. Patrick’s Catholic School and Parish. Our teacher was gone due

to reasons not told to the students, so the school had assigned a substitute teacher for

the class, Mrs. Hurley. She was the mother of one of the student’s in the class, who was

an acquaintance of mine. At the same time, my parents introduced a reward for good

grades and being a good student, taking the whole family to the local community center

that was just built. I loved that place so much that I wanted to go no matter what. Then I

noticed that the homework Mrs. Hurley was assigning made the entire class have at

least three hours of homework. This interfered with the community center because a

catch of the deal was that all homework was to be completed within two hours of getting

home. After missing one week of opportunities to go to the center, I thought it would be

easier to say I did the homework when I didn’t. However, when I got to school, I said I

turned it in, and that Mrs. Hurley must have misplaced it. I prolonged this charade for a

couple weeks, until Mrs. Hurley asked me to stay after sending the rest of class to lunch

and asked if I had really turned in the assignments. At this point, I kept with the story I

had made, and she sent me off to lunch.

However in the case of Stephen Glass, he lied to make his stories more

interesting to the rest of the staff of The New Republic. He started fabricating one fact,

then a couple more, and more until the articles were either the truth, or complete

fallacies. How much did he lie? At least 27 of his 41 articles were fabricated in one way

or another. All of this starting back in December 1996, when Glass wrote an article

entitled "Hazardous to Your Mental Health." The Center for Science in the Public

Interest replied to the article by writing a letter to the editor stating:

The current (Dec. 30) issue of The New Republic has

an article ("Hazardous to Your Mental Health") that is

a “irresponsible, error-filled" attack on the Center for

Science in the Public Interest…

To which the editor, Michael Kelly, backed up the story by acknowledging Glass’ notes.

Eventually, the liar gets caught. When I got home from school that day, my

parents asked me the same thing that Mrs. Hurley asked. Did I complete the

assignments? They looked very upset so I confessed to lying. They were highly

disappointed with me. Then they called the school back and Mrs. Hurley scheduled a

conference with us. After the conference, my parents and Mrs. Hurley concluded since

this case was the first time I was lying, they would not put it on my academic record,

and I would have to complete every assignment in one weekend. They also concluded

that all assignments given when Mrs. Hurley was teaching would have to be completed

under supervision of either my parents or a teacher. I would also not get the opportunity

to go to the community center again during the school year.

Glass’ questionable articles continued until “Hack Heaven” was released in May

1998. When Adam Penenburg, one of Forbes’ reporters, saw the article and tried to

figure out why The New Republic got the story before they did. When Peneburg started

fact checking the article, he started finding large discrepancies. When Glass was

confronted, he started creating more lies to cover up the faults in the article. He created

websites, used his brother as the voice of Jukt Micronics, the made up company that

the article was based around, and even took his editor to a hotel that Glass himself had

never been to. The facts just outweighed the lies and Glass just shattered. The cost for

all of this lying was losing his job writing for The New Republic, and on November 6,

2013, CBS News reported that California Supreme Court justices were skeptical about

letting Glass practice law.

In summary, lying doesn’t fix the problem. The only thing that lying does is covers

up the truth, including the truth that you lied in the first place. My advice to anyone, do

not lie. I got in a tremendous amount of trouble, and so did Glass. Lying is not worth the

cost or the time, it will take a shorter amount of time and less effort to tell the truth and

get over the situation.

Citations

Glass, Stephen. Interview by Steve Kroft. 7 May 2003. 60 Minutes. May . TV.

Ray, Billy, dir. Shattered Glass. Cruise/Wagner Productions, Lionsgate Entertainment,

2003. Film. 8 Nov 2013.

“Stephen Glass, Disgraced Ex-journalist, Faces Skeptical Court in Bid to Get Calif. Law

License." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 06 Nov 2013. Web. 08 Nov 2013.