Stephen Glass

Stephen Randall Glass (born September 15, 1972) is an American former journalist.

He worked for The New Republic from 1995 to 1998 until it was revealed many of his published articles were fabrications.

An internal investigation by The New Republic determined the majority of stories he wrote either contained false information or were fictitious.

Following the journalism scandal, Glass pursued a career in law.

Although he earned a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center and passed the bar exam in New York and California, he was unable to become a licensed attorney in either state over concerns derived from his scandal.

Glass instead found work as a paralegal at the law firm Carpenter, Zuckerman & Rowley, serving as the director of special projects and trial-team coordinator.

After his graduation, Glass worked for Policy Review before being hired by The New Republic in 1995 as an editorial assistant.

Soon after, the 23-year-old Glass advanced to writing features.

While employed full-time at TNR, he also wrote for other magazines including George, Rolling Stone, and Harper's; he also contributed to Public Radio International's (PRI) This American Life.

Glass generally enjoyed loyalty from The New Republic staff.

But his articles generally relied on unnamed or partially identified sources, and several of his pieces prompted denials from their subjects.

In December 1996, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) was the target of a hostile article by Glass titled "Hazardous to Your Mental Health".

CSPI wrote a letter to the editor and issued a press release pointing out numerous inaccuracies and distortions and hinting at possible plagiarism.

The organization Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) accused Glass of falsehoods in his March 1997 article "Don't You D.A.R.E".

In May 1997, Joe Galli of the College Republican National Committee accused Glass of fabrications in "Spring Breakdown", his lurid tale of drinking and debauchery at the 1997 Conservative Political Action Conference.

A June 1997 article called "Peddling Poppy" about a Hofstra University conference on George H. W. Bush drew a letter from Hofstra reciting errors in the story.

Through these allegations, The New Republic generally defended Glass; editor Michael Kelly even demanded CSPI apologize to Glass.

Still, the magazine's majority owner and editor-in-chief, Martin Peretz, later said that his wife had told him that she did not find Glass's stories credible and had stopped reading them.

In the May 18, 1998, issue, The New Republic published a story by Glass (by then an associate editor) entitled "Hack Heaven", purportedly telling the story of a 15-year-old hacker who had penetrated a company's computer network, then been hired by that company as a security consultant.

The article opened as follows,

"Ian Restil, a 15-year-old computer hacker who looks like an even more adolescent version of Bill Gates, is throwing a tantrum. 'I want more money. I want a Miata. I want a trip to Disney World. I want X-Men comic [book] number one. I want a lifetime subscription to Playboy – and throw in Penthouse. Show me the money! Show me the money!...'

Across the table, executives from a California software firm called Jukt Micronics are listening and trying ever so delicately to oblige.

'Excuse me, sir,' one of the suits says tentatively to the pimply teenager.

'Excuse me.

Pardon me for interrupting you, sir. We can arrange more money for you.'"

Adam Penenberg, a reporter with Forbes magazine, endeavored to fact check the piece, in part to explain how "Forbes Digital had been scooped by a weekly political publication."

Beyond Glass's story, Penenberg found no search results for "Jukt Micronics", and, when he made an inquiry to the California Franchise Tax Board, the tax board reported back that no such company had ever paid taxes.

Penenberg also found that several other claims Glass made in the article appeared to be false: Glass claimed that law-enforcement officials in Nevada ran articles pleading with companies not to hire hackers, but Bob Harmon, Public Information Officer for the Nevada State Attorney General's Office, said no such ads ran.

Glass claimed that 21 states were considering a "Uniform Computer Security Act", which would "criminalize immunity deals between hackers and companies," but law enforcement officials and the National Conference of Commissions on Uniform State Laws were unaware of any such proposed legislation.

Glass claimed that there had been a computer-hacker conference in Bethesda, Maryland, sponsored by the "National Assembly of Hackers", but the Forbes team "could not unearth a single hacker who had even heard of this outfit, let alone attended the conference."

On Friday, May 8, 1998, Forbes presented its full findings to Charles Lane, the lead editor of The New Republic.

Lane had, to that point, been unaware of potential issues with the article.

Lane had Glass take him to a Hyatt Regency Hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, where Glass had claimed the computer-hacker convention occurred.

He found that the hotel's layout did not match the story's description, the building in which the piece said the event took place had not been open on the supposed day of the conference, and the restaurant where the hackers supposedly had a dinner banquet afterwards closed in the mid afternoon.

Lane dialed a Palo Alto number provided by Glass and spoke with a man who identified himself as a Jukt executive; when he realized that the "executive" was actually Glass's brother, he fired Glass.

Lane later said:

Glass made a brief return to writing when he fictionalized his story in his 2003 novel The Fabulist.

The same year, the scandal was dramatized in the film Shattered Glass, which was based on a Vanity Fair article of the same name and starred Hayden Christensen as Glass.

Glass grew up in a Jewish family in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, and attended Highland Park High School.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania as University Scholar and was an executive editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian.