Stephen Glass was the head of The New Republic’s fact-checking department and wrote articles for newspapers like The New Republic, Harper’s, and Rolling Stone.
Workers spent several weeks re-reporting all of Steve’s articles. It turned out that Steve had been making up characters, scenes, events, whole stories from first word to last. He made up some funny material, like a convention of Monica Lewinsky memorabilia. He also made up some really awful stuff: racist cab drivers, sexist Republicans, desperate poor people calling in to a psychic hotline, career-damaging quotes about politicians.
The newspaper eventually figured out that very few of his stories were completely true. Not only that, but he went to extreme lengths to hide his fabrications, filling notebooks with fake interview notes and creating fake business cards and fake voicemails.
Glass disappeared for awhile and lost contact with everyone. This article shows how credibility and ethics, if taken lightly, can be completely tarnished if and when people find out.