Shattered Glass Extension Activity
1. Tom Kummer is an outlandish German magazine writer who claimed to interview extremely famous people such as Courtney Love, Brad Pitt, Pamela Anderson, and many others. In his interviews he was able to get almost unbelievably intimate information out of the generally private subjects he was interviewing, which gave him a lot of attention. But for the 6+ years he was at the magazine, none of his editors so much as asked for a tape of the interview. After Courtney Love's publicist had an article about her translated and fact checked, people discovered that he had been fabricating entire interviews and hadn't even met almost all of his subjects. After he had been caught, he defended himself by claiming that he makes art, not journalism, and excersizes what he calls "Borderline Journalism". He claimed that any competent editor should've realized that his stories were fabricated, and he has never apologized. He was later paid to take part in a documentary exposing him. He's now a tennis coach in L.A.
1. Tom Kummer is an outlandish German magazine writer who claimed to interview extremely famous people such as Courtney Love, Brad Pitt, Pamela Anderson, and many others. In his interviews he was able to get almost unbelievably intimate information out of the generally private subjects he was interviewing, which gave him a lot of attention. But for the 6+ years he was at the magazine, none of his editors so much as asked for a tape of the interview. After Courtney Love's publicist had an article about her translated and fact checked, people discovered that he had been fabricating entire interviews and hadn't even met almost all of his subjects. After he had been caught, he defended himself by claiming that he makes art, not journalism, and excersizes what he calls "Borderline Journalism". He claimed that any competent editor should've realized that his stories were fabricated, and he has never apologized. He was later paid to take part in a documentary exposing him. He's now a tennis coach in L.A.
2. Shattered Glass exposed a side of journalism to me that I had no idea existed. I didn't realize that the extensive fact checking that an article goes through before being published is almost entirely based off of the writer's notes, which creates the necessity for intense trust between the editor and his writers. The movie made me question if all of these supposedly prestigious magazines that everybody reads are always being honest or not. The journalistic profession obviously requires very good morals, and the ability to fight the urge to make a story more entertaining by fabricating details. It made me realize how important it is for a good journalist to value the truth.
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