Patricia Smith wrote a review of a concert she didn't go to and she wrote many columns of fictional characters and fabricated events. She was forced to resign from the Boston Globe. What she did was a lot like what Steven Glass did.
I think what Steven Glass did was very wrong. He didn't just make mistakes in reporting, he just flat out lied. Shattered Glass showed me that it isn't as hard as I thought to make stories up or even accidentally write a false statement that changes the way the reader feels about the subject. It is important to get all the facts right the first time.
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