When it was revealed in 1998 that the New Republic’s Stephen Glass was a serial liar, several media outlets scrambled to see if they had been taken in by his fabulism.
Many newsrooms discovered that they had, in fact, published outright falsehoods, and it wasn’t long before editors issued retractions and corrections, apologizing to their dumbfounded audiences for Glass’ numerous deceptions.
But the fallout from Glass’ many fabrications has been so great, that some are still apologizing nearly 20 years later.
Harper’s magazine is the latest example. For the first time in its 165-year-history, the magazine issued a retraction this week for a 1998 article, titled “Prophets and Losses,” wherein Glass recounted his supposed time as a telephone psychic for a fortune-telling hotline.
“This article has been retracted. It is available here as part of the Harper’s Magazine archive; for more information, see the letter from Stephen Glass and our response in the January 2016 issue,” reads an online editors note where the fraudulent story once existed.
The long-overdue retraction was first flagged by Retraction Watch, and the Washington Post’s Yanan Wang followed up this week, digging deeper into the story’s background.
As it turns out, Harper’s withdrew the story finally only after Glass himself came forward this year, admitting in a letter that he had made up almost every detail in the article.
“I fabricated the text from ‘The man’ to ‘the psychic’ in paragraph 5; ‘Sharona’ and the attributed quote in paragraph 6. I exaggerated and fabricated the facts in paragraphs 7, 8, 9, and 10,” Glass said in a letter to the editor for Harper’s January 2016 issue. “I fabricated the events labeled ‘August 4’; ‘August 8’; ‘August 9’; the last paragraph of ‘August 10’; ‘August 12’; ‘August 13′; the first, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh paragraphs of “August 15’ …” and it goes on like that for quite awhile.
“In addition to the content of the article, I fabricated notes in support of this story,” he added. “I lied to the staff of Harper’s. I fabricated in interviews about this story. … This story should not be relied upon in any way.”
In total, nearly 75 percent of the 7,902-word article was “based on fabrications,” according to Harper’s.
“A deception of that scale requires more than a simple enumerating of errors and falsehoods; we must retract the entire article. We won’t remove it from our online archive, but we’ve stamped the digital version with the word retracted,” the magazine’s editors note read.
“We remain committed to getting the story straight month after month, year after year — and to making sure no one like Stephen Glass is ever allowed to fool us again,” it added.
Prior to Glass’ incredible downfall, he was a well-known and respected journalist, contributing to not just the New Republic and Harper’s, but also Rolling Stone magazine and the now-defunct George magazine.
When it was discovered that Glass was a peddler of falsehoods, Harper’s quickly terminated its contract with him.
The magazine didn’t retract his story, and explained at the time in a comment to the Washington Post that it could neither confirm nor deny the details of his supposed tale.
All that changed, however, when Glass finally admitted to the lies.
But as the Post and others have asked: Why now? Why has the disgraced reporter only now admitted to fabricating the Harper’s story?
“[T]he move is probably more self-serving than remorseful on Glass’s part,” the Post suggested. “After all, he begins the letter with the phrase ‘I have been asked to identify what was fabricated in my article.’ This suggests that he wasn’t doing it by choice, or out of some moral impulse, but rather to achieve another end.”
As to the end Glass is likely trying to achieve, the Los Angeles Times ‘Michael Hiltzik theorized this week that it probably has to do with the disgraced journalist’s failed attempts to obtain a California law license.
“[I]it’s reasonable to conclude that it’s related to his quest for a California law license,” Hiltzik wrote. “He was turned down last year because of his past misdeeds but is eligible to reapply in 2017.”
“By then, he’ll have to show that he’s completely clean,” he added.
Glass also returned the $10,000 he was paid by Harper’s to write “Prophets and Losses,” suggesting further that his admitting finally to faking the story has more to do with achieving some personal end then it does making amends for lying to his audiences, the Post suggested.
