Shattered Glass

Early 1998. Twenty-five year old Stephen Glass is the youngest of fifteen writers/editors at The New Republic, a little distributed but highly regarded - especially among those that matter, such as the President - political commentary magazine based in Washington, DC. He is seen as the wunderkind at his high school alma mater, and is well liked and respected among his New Republic colleagues. That view by his colleagues is because he is self-effacing in a lost boy way, helpful, and captivating, yet he manages to be able to be at the right place at the right time to come up with interesting story ideas. He is also hard working, doing his job while just starting law school part-time at Georgetown. The same cannot be said about the magazine's current editor-in-chief, Charles Lane, who was promoted after the most recent editor, Michael Kelly, was fired by publisher Marty Peretz. Michael's staff respected him because he stood up for them against Marty or whoever else challenged them, whereas Chuck, who was just another staff writer/editor before the promotion, is seen as betraying that loyalty to Michael by accepting the job even before Michael knew he was being let go. As with any non-fiction publication, each story is fact-checked by staff to ensure accuracy to prevent liable. However, Stephen's latest printed story begins to be questioned by journalists at Forbes online magazine, as they wished they had discovered the story, wanted to do a followup piece, but found that many of the items listed in the story could not be verified independently of the materials Stephen had given to the New Republic's fact-checkers. This work by Forbes begins an even trickier relationship between Chuck and Stephen, the latter who staunchly defends his written piece, being able eventually to back-up his sources with albeit questionable "proof". Chuck, on the other hand, has to decide how far he will go to protect Stephen, his writer, especially as Stephen gets caught in one lie after another, about which he is able to get away with solely in his self-effacing apologetic manner which got him the support of his colleagues to begin with.