by Mike Tronnes

POSTED MAY 16, 1998--
On Monday May 11, newspapers across the country reported that The New Republic magazine had fired Associate Editor Stephen Glass for fabricating an article about a computer hacker. In the piece, titled "Hack Heaven", a teenager breaks into a company's database and then posts the salaries of all of the employees, along with pictures of naked women, on the company's (Jukt Micronics) web site. Jukt then tries to hire the hacker, who, as the article begins, is holding out--through his agent--for all he can get. "Ian Restil, a 15-year-old computer hacker who looks like an even more adolescent version of Bill Gates, is throwing a tantrum. 'I want more money. I want a Miata. I want a trip to Disney World. I want X-Man comic [book] number one. I want a lifetime subscription to Playboy, and throw in Penthouse. Show me the money! Show me the money!' "

Forbes magazines's "Digital Tool" website, fearing that they had been scooped on a business story, began investigating the companies and organizations listed in the article and found that they were all fake. (Glass went so far as to construct a fake web site on AOL for Jukt Micronics that even included criticism of his fictitious New Republic article!) Presented with the evidence from Forbes, New Republic editor Charles Taylor confronted Glass and the hoax began to unravel. In the process, a number of other sensational stories by Glass--including a report from a memorabilia convention featuring Monica Lewinsky sex products and an article about a bond trading company with a shrine to Alan Greenspan--were also found to be fakes. The New Republic has removed the questionable stories from it's website (in spite of the fact that The New Republic circulates more than 100,000 hard copies of each issue) and the veracity of other stories that Glass has written are now being called into question.

Among the questions being asked about Glass--an up-and-coming 25 year-old writer with free-lance contracts at Rolling Stone, Harper's and George -- are whether he is a congenital liar, so intent on making his mark in a culture that treats journalists as celebrities, that he would attempt to fabricate his way to the top, and/or, is he someone with a highly developed sense of pranksterism, who was simply trying to see how far he could strech the truth and get away with it? Was he just a con man grifting the media?

In addition to questions about shoddy fact-checking at The New Republic, is the larger story about a media environment so sensational, fast-moving and utterly overwhelming that many stories, regardless of how far-fetched, are taken at face value. And by the time a story has been proven false, it has  already moved around the globe and in many cases generated follow-up stories based on the original fabrication.

The Stephen Glass controversy has launched a cascade of articles and opinion,most of which are available on the internet: What follows are Cursor's links to the Autopsy of a Hoax. We will be adding updates as the story develops.

Autopsy of a Hoax

A Tissue of Lies
The Stephen Glass Index

SUCK.COM
Stephen Glass is just part of a storied tradition of media make-up artists

WIRED.COM
Print Media in Glass Houses

SUCK.COM
Hit and Run No. CXXVI

SALON
Hacker heaven, editors' hell
The New Republic's bogus article reveals a chasm of cluelessness.

FORBES.COM
Tracking lies
Lies, damn lies and fiction