Should disgraced journalist Stephen Glass be admitted to the California Bar?

Have I missed the part where Glass is still working as a journalist, having never been found out by the profession?

Ap

 

Funny how you cherry-picked that one line of my earlier post and left out the rest, where I compared what he did to committing a fraud and argued that's why he should never be barred.

What he did is a moral wrong, and should serve to keep him from becoming a lawyer. But it doesn't rise to the level of criminality. Fraud requires a reliance on the part of the person being duped that results in a legal injury. That's a direct harm. Regardless of the relationship (employer-employee or freelance) the publications he fabricated for would have a hard time showing any direct harm. They didn't get sued for libel because the sources never existed. Did they lose subscribers? In all the Glass stories I've read through the years, I've never heard that come up. Even if they did, they have to prove it's because of his stories and not some other reason. Did they lose advertising? Same conundrum. And that's ignoring that the magazines shared some complicity in the whole thing because their fact checking processes completely failed and there were doubts about his work in the newsroom prior to publication.

No prosecutor I know would attempt to take that case in front of a jury. And most of the ones I know have a general dislike for journalists.

Stephen Glass should never work as a journalist or a lawyer because of his misrepresentations. But he committed no crime.

 

Don't be an idiot. He is guity of fraud.

Any publication not dealing explicitly in fiction presumes its writers are making reasonable attempts to deliver material which is based in fact.

Would Glass be guilty of fraud if he simply fucked up facts and figures, made shitloads of mistakes, turned in sloppy reporting? No.

But he didn't fuck up facts and figures. He MADE THEM UP out of thin air. It wasn't that he was not confident in the accuracy of his material; he knew for a fact it was concocted.

 

You can stamp your feet and say he's guilty of fraud all you like and it doesn't make it true.

When I worked as a prosecutor, I would not have indicted him and I think even the most gung-ho prosecutor s I know would be hard-pressed and unwilling to make a fraud case against him, for the reasons I've already explained.

What he did was unethical, but not every unethical act is illegal. The fact remains that he was never charged with a crime and never convicted. His employers didn't even seek civil damages.

 

From TNR's 100th Anniversary issue:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120145/stephen-glass-new-republic-scandal-still-haunts-his-law-career

 

That's a tremendous read.

 

Very enlightening, and from various angles.

 

I think, even as the Internet makes it much easier for plagiarists to get caught, fabrications are the biggest problem in journalism today and the people doing that are infinitely harder to catch than plagiarists.

Most places don't have the resources to check facts. If they catch somebody fabricating something it's almost always by accident.

 

The biggest problem in journalism today is the corporate sell-out.

 

I just hope this is the last big piece I ever read on him. It was good, and I'm glad Rosin wrote it, and perhaps it helped her and other TNR folk get some closure. I'm just tired of this clown. I don't care why he did it anymore, or if mom and dad didn't hug him enough or if he really wanted to be loved and wasn't sure if he was. I don't care if he's a lawyer and that he helps homeless people clean up for trial. He lied to such a degree, he gave ammo to every fanboi (in sports or politics or other) who can look at carefully researched and reported story and say "I bet it's all made up! Can't trust the media." And so he made my job harder, all to stoke his own ego. I don't want him punished forever, or to be incapable of a second act. I just want him to go away. I get that TNR sought him out for this piece, and that's fine. It should be the last word on this mess. FU, Glass. May you love happily ever after in obscurity.

 

Well-said. The best way for this to happen is to let him practice law and become someone else's problem.

 

True, but sadly I'm not sure that can be avoided at this point.