Shattered Glass
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by Pbcoyotes
One of the more thought provoking movies I saw last summer was called Shattered Glass, which starred Hayden Christensen. My wife and I enjoyed his performance as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in the Star Wars Prequels, and wanted to see what is acting range truly was.
You might be wondering, how does the movie Shattered Glass have to do with hockey?
The synopsis of Shattered Glass was about a young reporter named Stephen Glass who worked for The New Republic during the late 1990s. Essentially, in order to help himself feel more powerful in a highly competitive journalism market, he made stories up and passed them off as fact. He would pitch story ideas to his colleagues and after reveling in their admiration of him, he concocted these articles where the story was so wild it had to have been true.
Unfortunately, his high ambition got the better of him because Glass wrote a technology story that was blatantly false. In the story written by Glass, he describes his experience with meeting a 15 year-old computer hacker who gained employment as an Information Security Consultant. The 15 year-old hacker got the job after reportedly gaining access to the company's computer systems and exposing their security weaknesses. After allegedly meeting this young man, Glass described in his article the financial compensation, along with other perks of the deal.
Another journalist, Adam Penenberg, who worked the technology beat at Forbes.com saw the hacker story Glass wrote and thought that it was too good to be true. After much research, Penenberg was right and exposed Glass as a fraud.
Glass became so enmeshed in his fantasy world that he could not figure out fact from fiction and essentially believed all of his lies. After the technology piece was dismissed as fraudulent, more articles written by Glass were also discounted. Shattered Glass is a fascinating story about a journalist falling from grace because of an inner ambition to be powerful and to be admired by everyone.
It's an excellent movie - I highly recommend it. After viewing the movie (or before renting it), thanks to Wikipedia, you can begin researching these events for yourself.
Again, what do Shattered Glass, Stephen Glass, Forbes.com, The New Republic, and Adam Penenberg have to with hockey, exactly?
Hockey is very quiet now - the summer brings relaxation and rejuvenation for the athletes until the season kicks back up into high gear. Unfortunately, if anyone, such as myself, has an insatiable appetite for all things hockey, and all things NHL, any news is a welcome diversion.
However, just because one person writes about a particular hockey player moving to a specific team, it doesn't mean that the news is true. Before jumping to any sort of conclusions about which player is going to which team, read and think about which story or perspective is more accurate. Anyone can say anything about any situation. It's what made The National Enquirer so popular on supermarket shelves.
There are people who need to feel more important than they actually are. It's a very unfortunate trap to fall into, especially when other people validate the very ambition that causes the delusion in the first place.
Just like Stephen Glass.
