ГУЛаг Палестины

Certs mints, not drugs. It says the flight to London took place six months later, and

was paid for by the filmmaker. And it says the "mule" was actually turned back at

Heathrow because he had a counterfeit passport, and thus never entered Britain.

[...]

The documentary included a highly dramatized segment in which reporters under armed

guard were taken to a remote location for an interview with a figure described as a

high-ranking member of the Cali drug cartel. "60 Minutes" reported de Beaufort had to

travel blindfolded for two days by car to reach the scene of this secret rendezvous.

The Guardian [...] said the secret location was actually the producer's hotel room in

Colombia.

[...]

The British government's watchdog group, the Independent Television Commission, has

launched a study of its own. Unlike the United States, where government has no power

to police the content of news reporting, there are official regulations here requiring

that TV news demonstrate "a respect for truth."

CBS has not undertaken an investigation of its own, but will report to its viewers on

the results of the British investigations [...].

HOME DISINFORMATION 60 MINUTES 1254 hits since 20Oct98

Buzz Bissinger Vanity Fair Sep 1998 Old Liars, young liar

Trouble was, he made things up - sources, quotes, whole stories - in a

breathtaking web of deception that emerged as the most sustained fraud in modern

journalism.

The topic of lying in the media is of central importance on the Ukrainian Archive

because of the frequency with which the media uses the opportunity of reporting on

the Slavic world in general, and on Ukraine in particular, to instead calumniate

them. Three prominent examples are Jerzy Kosinski's career as Jewish-Holocaust

fabulist and Grand Calumniator of Poland, TIME magazine's wallowing girl photograph

of 22Feb93, and Morley Safer's 60 Minutes story The Ugly Face of Freedom, broadcast

over the CBS network on 23Oct94.

From such examples as the above, however, it is difficult to estimate the prevalence

of misinformation and disinformation in the media. It may be the case that

distortion and calumniation are limited to a few topics such as the Slavic world or

Ukraine, and that otherwise the media are responsible, professional, and accurate.

The value of studying the case of Stephen Glass, however, is that it suggests

otherwise - that perhaps the media operate under next to no oversight, that they are

rarely held accountable, and that only egregious lying over a protracted interval

eventually risks discovery and exposure. Had Stephen Glass been just a little less

of a liar, had he more often tempered his lies, more often redirected them from the

powerful to the powerless, he would today not only still be working as a reporter,

but winning prizes. Thus, the example of Stephen Glass serves to demonstrate the

viability of the hypothesis that misinformation and disinformation in the media is

widespread, and that the three examples mentioned above, and the many more documented

throughout the Ukrainian Archive, may not be exceptional deviations at all, but

rather the tip of an iceberg in an industry which is largely unregulated, which is

largely lacking internal mechanisms of quality control, which is responsive not to

truth, but to the dictates of ruling forces.

Another question which may be asked is whether Stephen Glass is the product of some

sub-culture which condones or encourages lying, or which even offers training in

lying.

The following excerpts, then, are from Buzz Bissinger, Shattered Glass, Vanity Fair,

September, 1998, pp. 176-190. The quoted portions are in gray boxes; the headings in

navy blue, however, have been introduced in the UKAR posting, and were not in the

original. I now present to you Stephen Glass largely on the possibility that our new

understanding of Stephen Glass will deepen our existing understanding of other

record-breaking, media-manipulating liars that have been featured on the Ukrainian

Archive, ones such as Yaakov Bleich, Morley Safer, Neal Sher, Elie Wiesel, and Simon

Wiesenthal.

One precondition of exceptional lying may be an intellectual mediocrity which puts a

low ceiling on the success that can be achieved through licit means. Thus, Stephen

Glass, although performing well in high school, began to perform poorly in University,

and when he began work as a reporter, was discovered to not know how to write:

Glass began his studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1990 on a pre-medical

curriculum. According to various accounts, he held his own at the beginning. But

then his grades nose-dived. He apparently flunked one course and barely passed

another, suggesting that he had simply lost interest in being on a pre-med track,

or had done poorly on purpose to shut the door to any future career in medicine.

Glass ultimately majored in anthropology. He reportedly did well in this area of

study, but given his inconsistent performance in pre-med courses, his overall

grade-point average at Penn was hardly distinguished - slightly less than a B.

"His shit wasn't always as together as everyone thought it was," said Matthew

Klein, who roomed with Glass at Penn when he was a senior and Glass a junior.

There were indicators to Klein that Glass was not doing particularly well

academically, but Glass never acknowledged it. "He always said he was doing fine,

doing fine," said Klein. (pp. 185-186)

Those familiar with his early work said he struggled with his writing. His