Shattered Glass is a film about how one of the youngest, most successful journalists in the US capitol garnered fame for his stunning reporting. However when his rival colleague and a competing publication start questioning the legitimacy of his articles, his career goes down a long tunnel filled with lies and deception.
In order to report on the stories in Shattered Glass, the journalists used a series of technical interview methods to get answers to their personal inquiries. These techniques include welcoming interview subjects, verifying claims, noting down small details, layering interview questions and investigating stories at their respective locations.
- Create a character and/or welcoming environment so you can get insider access into a story:
At the beginning of the film Shattered Glass, a New Republic reporter, Stephen Glass got an assignment to report on young conservatives at CPAC. He decided to dress up in an America-themed hat, glasses and apparel in order to blend in with the crowd and not stand out like a sore thumb. Stephen Glass would also produce intricate stories such as the false pretence of him being gay. Stephen would share these stories with his fellow New Republic journalists, editors and copy-writers.
By doing this, Glass was fairly successful because he got exclusive access to multiple interviewees at CPAC without the intimidation or doubt towards him as a journalist. This was significant, because many tories had bad blood with the media long before Trump; with the birth of Fox News in 1996. In addition, Stephen would create a character with other New Republic journalists. Glass told them random stories and asked odd questions like “are you mad at me?” to manipulate his colleagues.
Instead of slowing building up a relationship with the other journalists, Glass would use childlike manipulative tactics in order to be in their best regards. He used this to his benefit when the magazine’s journalists felt sympathetic for Glass when their editor Chuck Lane started penalizing him for his inaccurate published stories. For instance, Glass’ fellow journalist, Caitlin was an opponent to having Stephen fired because she cited it would “break” him. Caitlin was also on the receiving end of Glass’ various breakdowns.
Therefore, by Stephen making up false pretences such as being gay, he paved the way for his subjects/colleagues to feel comfortable with him and unconsciously enable his fake reporting. As a result, his co-workers stood by him till the very end, until his fake reporting was indisputable.
2. Do not allow your subject to present suggestions and unverified details as facts:
When a CPAC organizer objected to Glass’ Spring Breakdown story, his editor Michael Kelly brought him to his office for further questioning. When Kelly told him there were no mini bars in the event’s hotel rooms, he specifically asked Glass how he got to that conclusion. This question got Glass to confess that he made an unfounded assertion, because he associated the small bottles he saw meant there was a bar in the hotel rooms.
After, Kelly called the hotel to ask if it was possible for its customers to rent a fridge in their rooms. The subject on the phone said it was not possible, but Kelly did not retract the article or issue a response to their readers (like Lane eventually did at the end of the film).
Although Kelly’s line of questioning was effective in revealing the truth, he unresponsively chose not to retract Glass’ story. This is a bad journalistic technique, because journalists who report inaccurate details can be sued for defamation or other libel cases. Similar to the ending of Shattered Glass, there is the fear of the publication losing their integrity and reputation as an accurate, facts-first team.
This was alluded to when Lane confronted Glass about how Forbes’ journalists would go through his hacker story and find security camera footage and other details that were not factually accurate. Lane stressed throughout Shattered Glass that such lies would tarnish the publication’s reputation of being “the in-flight magazine of Air Force I.” Therefore, if a journalist or editor’s questioning of their reporter leads them to believe their publication’s story is subjective or inaccurate, they must remove or update it immediately. By doing this, it ensures the stories provided to their readers are entirely factual.
3. Enter a story with a different, unconventional lense, which would otherwise go unnoticed by other journalists:
Stephen Glass in a stream of consciousness outlined the importance of recording very miniscule details during every interview he conducts. Asking questions and taking notes of his subject’s interests, clothing, working environment, etc. adds to each story more character, humanity or in Stephen’s words, “behaviour.”
In Shattered Glass, Stephen asked several CPAC attendees about their age and noted down the party culture in their hotels (ie. the booze, prostitutes). By asking about these fine details, Stephen Glass was able to extract a story that was not only a specific profile of a group at the conservative gathering, but also was relevant to its time period: post-Clinton/Lewinski affair scandal during a democratic administration.
United conservatives, especially young tories, played a pivotal role in electing a republican president shortly after the impeachable scandal. Although Stephen’s story was miscreditied for unfounded claims and assumptions, the profile revealed how polarizing the period was, and a part of the republican voter demographic which won back the White House.
Stephen Glass’ interview technique by entering a story with a different, unique perspective has also worked out extremely well in other cases. For instance, after Joaquin Phoenix won a Golden Globe for his performance in Joker, one journalist asked him a cookie-cutter question about how he got into character.
Phoenix scoffed off the question, because he answered it in almost all the interviews he conducted while promoting the film for six months. Whereas, another journalist took an unusual route and asked him about his vegan diet and the vegan menu served at the event. Phoenix provided a detailed response, talking about how the agriculture/dairy industry is a prime factor of climate change, and how more award shows need to adopt a vegan dinner.
Subsequently days later, Phoenix was arrested at Jane Fonda’s Fire Drill Friday protest in Washington, DC. Phoenix brought up the same concerns from the journalist’s line-of-questioning at the protest. This example demonstrates how Stephen Glass’ unique, detail-oriented interview technique is effective because it exhumed information which added to a larger and more consequential story at-large (in this case being the climate crisis).
4. Strategically ease your main inquiry in during your interview in order to lay out a coherent story:
When a couple of journalists from Forbes had trouble pieces the details to Stephen Glass’ Hack Heaven story about a young hacker and its firm, they gave him and Lane a call. In the call, they allowed Stephen to defend his reporting and gave him the benefit of the doubt. They methodically asked him questions like if Glass ever called the hacker agents directly, or why a major hacking firm had an AOL Website. They also asked for various phone numbers and Emails before hand to try out and see if there are legitimate.
Once Forbes viewed the Website and received an additional phone number which was not from Nevada like it was supposed to be, they asked Glass how confident he was in his story. Glass agreed there were major holes in the details which did not add up or make sense.
The order in which they laid out their questions was effective, because it allowed them to garner more material for their story. Their prior research already had enough to prove Glass was making the hacker story, but they still persisted in asking for more details (ie. no state was crafting new Internet-themed legislation like he cited, etc.). By doing this, the Forbes journalists were able to build up their case to be larger and stronger until it was time to say ‘checkmate.’ Therefore, in order to have a solid and thorough story, it is important to ask building block questions which will reach to the heart of the issue. In Forbes’ case, it was to expose Glass as a fraudulent and fake journalist.
5. Besides referring to the Internet or external sources to fact-check, checkout your subject’s claims in person (with more follow up questions):
During one of the most climactic scenes in Shattered Glass, editor Chuck Lane got Stephen Glass to take him to the supposed restaurants and an office building where the “Jukt Micronics” gatherings took place. Lane raised suspicion on how it was odd to hold an exclusive hackers meeting at an open eatery.
Later, Lane asked follow up questions about where the office building was which held the hackers reunion. Lane saw in-person how it was impossible for 100 to 200 people to be in such a confined space. In addition, he effectively asked a second subject besides Stephen about the meeting’s time specifics. By getting a second subject (being a receptionist), they were able to state the building was not open on Sundays unlike Stephen’s story.
Lastly, when Chuck asked if and where the group had dinner, he found out the restaurant did not serve past lunchtime. By asking Glass additional details and fast-checking the logistics in-person, his editor Chuck Lane was able to successfully exhume inaccuracies in his story. If Lane chose to refer to a street map or an Internet search, he would have never seen first hand how the locations’ size, business hours and overall optics do not correlate with a large scale hacker firm meeting.
Chuck Lane’s interview and hands on fact-checking method is highly effective, as it worked to uncover other real high profile scandals. For example, Washington Post journalist Stephanie McCrummen broke the story on how an Alabama Senate candidate had a sexual encounter with a minor. When McCrummen received a tip that the candidate Roy Moore had an affinity for teenage girls, she immediately flew to Alabama to gather more details. When an alleged victim by the name of Leigh agreed to go on the record with her story, she answered McCrummen’s questions with a series of locations where she said to have met with Moore.
McCrummen and her team had to vet every single sentence in order to see if her story was credible. The journalists working the case drove to the corner Leigh said Moore picked her up at; tested if the drive was as long as she described; checked to see if the driveway was paved like she recounted, etc.
It was very effective for the Washington Post to run through the story details in real life, because a Google Map search would not have determined accurate information from many decades ago. Instead, McCrummen went to the local courthouse and obtained Moore’s property records to see if the commute and locations were accurate to their subject’s claims (it was!). This example illustrates how Chuck Lane’s in-person fact-checking technique is useful, because it allows journalists to find or not find holes in their subject’s story.
In essence, while Shattered Glass documented some of the worst examples of fake and fabricated news stories, it allowed many investigative interview techniques to prevail and bring home the truth. The interview skills demonstrated in the film allowed the various characters to garner access to an exclusive source, make their articles very detailed and write-up a thorough, coherent story.
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