Palmer

I just finished watching the movie "Shattered Glass" . The new editor, Chuck Lane, investigates into the situation and discovers that Stephen has "cooked the piece".  Cooking a Piece means that the journalist used fake people, events, and sources to create a story. Chuck looked into all of Stephen's previous work and discovered that he had been using fake information since he came to The New Republic.

In 2004, on of USA Today's star reporters, Jack Kelley, resigned from his job. an anonymous letter was sent to USA Today asking for an investigation of Kelley. the investigation led to the finding of letters Kelley sent to personal friends asking them to pose as a source when the editor reviewed his story. During further review, USA Today discovered that Kelley has been doing this since 1991. The reason he hadn't been caught was because of protection from editors. When this scandal was finally uncovered, two of the paper's top editors were forced to resign.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/2004-04-22-report-one_x.htm

 

In 1992, a segment was shown on Dateline NBC called "Waiting to Explode". the segment showed two General Motors vehicles exploding after a low-speed collision, insinuating that the cars were potentially dangerous. But it was later revealed that the explosion was caused by hidden remote control devices. General Motors sued NBC and won a settlement. NBC News President, Michael Gardner, wrote a correction that was read on-air on Dateline NBC. Gardner was later forced to resign because of this incident.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE6D61F3FF933A15750C0A965958260

 

Recently I was able to watch some of the movie "Shattered Glass". The story is based on true events. Hayden Christensen plays Stephen Glass, a young reporter for the New Republic Magazine.  Stephen might act kind of strange but he is loved by everyone in the office because of his caring attitude and his entertaining stories. Stephen wrote pieces tackled subjects that were previously untouched. He went the the republican convention under a fake name and discovered that all of the young delegates were partying in the hotel suites with large amounts of alcohol and drugs.
    Stephen had much respect for his editor, Michael Kelly.  Michael helped Stephen out with some fact-checking issues and always supported his writers. But that eventually became his downfall. After an argument with his boss, Marty Perez, Michael was fired and was replaced by Chuck.
    Chuck was a writer at the magazine. The rest of the staff was very displeased at Michael's departure and they felt Chuck could not fill his shoes. When Marty originally offered the job to Chuck he tried to turn it down out of respect for Michael but the final decision belonged to Marty.
    Chuck had to deal with a serious problem with a story written by Stephen. Stephen wrote a piece about a child hacker getting a security job at a large software company that he had hacked into. A reporter for Forbes Digital in New York, played by Steve Zahn, fact-checked Stephen's story and found out that all of the people, companies, studies, and laws mentioned in the story did not exist.
    The movie has become very interesting and i look forward to seeing the rest of it.

    In the first scene of the movie Stephen  says "Journalism is the act of capturing behavior."

    This quote means that a journalist is more than spitting out facts. you have to be able to put human emotion into words. No one is amazed with just straight facts. It's the emotional impact the facts can bring  that is fascinating.

Recently I was able to watch some of the movie "Shattered Glass". The story is based on true events. Hayden Christensen plays Stephen Glass, a young reporter for the New Republic Magazine.  

This Friday night,  the Presidential debate tool place at Mississippi University. Republican nominee, Governor John McCain, stated he might not attend the debate so he could go to Washington to try to solve the current economic crisis. Governor McCain realized the importance of the debate and attended anyway. I was able to watch Governor McCain answer the questions asked to him and the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama. Just because i was watching doesn't mean I knew what was going on. Both nominees kept on talking about studies, bills, and other documents that I'm sure most of the American public has no idea about. Even if someone did know about what the candidates were referring too, unless it cut taxes or lowered the prices of gases, I doubt they care that much about it. I can't really pinpoint the most important events of the debate. It was incredibly boring. I will give candidates some credit though. Senator Obama seemed very positive about his plans if he were to become president. Governor McCain seemed very experience and knew what he was talking about. One segment i did take notice to was when Governor McCain was talking about how he would drastically cut spending. He said that Senator Obama only recently changed his mind on how much spending he would cut because Governor McCain is cutting $300 billion. McCain spit out a bunch of figures about how Obama was just following McCain's lead. Obama's only response was "I don't know where John is getting his numbers."

Overall i thought it was very boring debate. Both candidates just tried to prove they were better than the other. But if i had to pick a winner, I would choose Governor McCain. He was at least well prepared. He showed he is going to try his best to head this country in the right direction.

John McCain said he might not show up for tonight's Presidential debate at the University of Mississippi. He feels that he should be solving the economic crisis in Washington instead of attending this event.   Mr McCain,  I have some news for you.  You are running for the President of the United States! If you don't show up to a debate to support yourself,  what are your voters going to think? If McCain does not attend this debate,  his campaigned will be crippled.  He can solve the financial crisis tommorrow or even the next day.  There is only one day you can go to this debate, and that is today. Make sure you all watch to see if McCain shows up or ditches like he did to David Letterman.  He couldn't appear on Letterman's show because he needed to go to washington.  Letterman wasn't happy and I can't blame him.