The New Republic's glass balls.

Non-blockbuster films arrive in Baltimore, a secondary (maybe tertiary) market, several weeks after they've debuted in New York and Los Angeles, and so it wasn't until last Sunday morning that I saw Shattered Glass, the gussied-up story of Stephen Glass, a onetime New Republic sub-editor who was exposed in 1998 as a serial journalistic fabricator. The initial screening here was held at the Charles Theater?sort of a hipper and friendlier version of Film Forum?and included a post-film discussion ably moderated by Lee Gardner, editor of Baltimore's weekly City Paper.

Surprisingly, the packed audience was composed mostly of people over 50?my 11-year-old son Nicky was the only person, I suspect, who didn't remember exactly where he or she was when JFK was assassinated 40 years ago?and the reaction was mostly positive. Why, I'm not sure, for Shattered Glass is little more than a decent made-for-tv film that certainly wouldn't have made it to the big screen absent the Jayson Blair controversy?and all the subsequent embarrassments and firings?at the Times last spring. The acting itself was fine, with Hayden Christensen (Glass), Peter Sarsgaard (former TNR editor Charles Lane) and Steve Zahn (a Forbes online writer who triggered the Glass expose) all turning in notable performances.

A few thoughts struck me while watching Shattered Glass. One, as an artistic achievement, it's the Yanks' Enrique Wilson, as compared to Gentleman's Agreement or All the President's Men taking on a Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays role. Second, the self-aggrandizement of the New Republic itself continues to be fairly repulsive; not only has the magazine advertised Shattered Glass constantly on its website, but the film's conclusion, in which Lane is portrayed as a ticker-tape-parade-worthy hero for firing Glass, is just silly. It's not as if the Glass saga at the weekly?Lane found out that nearly 30 of his articles were made up?was something to brag about. And the magazine's Nov. 10 cover has a picture of Glass to accompany Jonathan Chait's story "What the Media Can Learn from Stephen Glass: And What It Can't."

Talk about making lemonade out of rotten lemons.

In addition, there were two galling factual inaccuracies in the film. When then-proprietor Marty Peretz (he now owns a third of TNR) fires Lane's predecessor, the late Michael Kelly, it's not mentioned even in passing that the bombastic Peretz canned one of the most influential journalists of the past generation because Kelly was unrelenting in his criticism, within TNR's pages, of the magazine's pet Al Gore. Also, gladiator Lane (who was a paid consultant for the film) is identified at the end as simply now working for the Washington Post, when in fact he, too, was let go by Peretz in 1999, in favor of Peter Beinart.

(Beinart, actually, after a rocky start, has emerged as a talented editor, producing a mostly liberal magazine that nonetheless is eclectic enough to attract readers who can't abide doctrinaire Bush-is-a-moron competitors such as the American Prospect, the Nation and the Washington Monthly.)

Most obviously, that Shattered Glass could even be made?and that book publisher Simon & Schuster would pay real money to Stephen Glass to write a silly novel called The Fabulist, released last May?is an enormous statement about pop culture (of which the media's an integral cog) today. Can anyone imagine that in 1981, after Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke had a Pulitzer Prize rescinded after it was revealed her winning series of stories was based on a composite character, that a movie would be made celebrating the Post's soul-searching over the deception?

Cooke was exiled from journalism in '81, correctly so; today, however, she'd probably have a film deal of her own, not to mention (after a suitable period of contrition) guest appearances with the likes of airheads like Katie Couric, Larry King and Barbara Walters. Also, at least Cooke's deceptive articles were based on reality?young kids strung out on dope in inner-city Washington, DC?as opposed to Glass' utterly frivolous "feature" pieces on phantom hackers, Young Republican frat antics and a trade show for Monica Lewinsky souvenirs.

You can just see, two years from now, Jayson Blair, Howell Raines and Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in director chairs on a Hollywood set, offering advice to the director of a glorified film about the Times' flim-flam reporter and the high-priced stars. In fact, there's already talk about Will Smith taking on the Blair role; I'd like to see Billy Bob Thornton portray Raines and hell, Sulzberger, a mountain-climbing, I-can-have-it-all Boomer, can pull a Jann Wenner and play himself.

A lot of ink has been spilled about Shattered Glass?in addition to heavy internet coverage?and with few exceptions, it's fairly positive. There are comments from TNR employees, such as literary editor Leon Wieseltier, who's written a number of superb and moving essays on 9/11, who told the Times' David Carr: "Of course [Shattered Glass] is good for the New Republic. We got stung, we figured out the sting and got it back together. Chuck Lane's handling of the Stephen Glass debacle brought nothing but glory to the New Republic."

Beinart also gives Carr (who was editor of Washington's City Paper in '98 and therefore more familiar than most with TNR's staff) a quote for his Oct. 19 article, saying, "When they pick [TNR] up, they will find a magazine that's not only careful and scrupulous in its facts but interesting as well."

Love the spin, Peter, but I doubt anyone who sees the film will rush home to subscribe to your weekly.

By far the most repellent article about Shattered Glass was written by David Plotz, Slate's Washington editor. Making the ludicrous claim that this middling production "may become this era's defining movie about journalism," Plotz pours it on thick.

He begins: "Finally, Hollywood has made a movie for me. Shattered Glass, the latest installment in the multimedia extravaganza that is the Stephen Glass story, is all about people I know. It tells the story of events I participated in. Its chief eye candy [wasn't that phrase passé in 1986?] is a character based on my wife. Watching it felt like dreaming: Here was an exact?and yet utterly unfamiliar?copy of my world? And Chloe Sevigny?the Oscar-nominated Chloe Sevigny!?plays Caitlin Avey, a character modeled on [Plotz's wife Hanna Rosin]? This is a fantasy come true: A Hollywood starlet dressed up in my wife's clothes, talking sass at machine-gun speed like my wife, and looking as much like my wife as a blond straight-haired American can look like a brunet curly-haired Israeli."

Maybe Beinart's right: Plotz probably plopped down dough for 20 subscriptions to the New Republic after seeing Chloe/Hanna in Shattered Glass.

The best review I read of the film was by Anthony Lane in the Nov. 3 New Yorker, a scathing piece of criticism that might have shocked the less solipsistic members of the TNR/Slate crowd back to reality.

Lane writes: "If the internal turmoils of a political magazine based in Washington are now considered sufficient grounds for a motion picture, there is no saying where the movie industry, avid for fresh material, will choose to cast its net: A struggle for the soul of Men's Health? A major dustup over late-bottled port in the pages of Decanter??The problem is simple: What, pray, is the big deal? Stephen Glass was a faker on the make, a species common to most fields of human endeavor, yet, to judge by the solemnity with which this movie treats his story, the importance of his transgressions puts him somewhere between Ted Bundy and Alger Hiss? The closing credits of the movie remind us that Stephen Glass's editor Michael Kelly was killed while working in Iraq in 2003. Now, that is a story, and it makes the rest of 'Shattered Glass' look smaller than ever."

The discussion of the film after its screening at the Charles last Sunday was earnest and not altogether boring. One woman made me wince, asking Lee Gardner just how we, the public, can trust the media, comparing Fox News to the low-budget, GOP-bashing website truthout.org. Oy. The reality is, as anyone who's ever been interviewed by a newspaper or television station knows, while unhinged journalists like Stephen Glass are rare?although I'm certain there are at least a dozen more Glass-clones out there, who may or may not be discovered?the media fucks up a lot.

Never mind the differing political points of view in say the Times or New York Post; that's just opinion, which was once relegated to the editorial pages. I'm thinking particularly of the inevitable inaccuracies of international reporting. How in the world can a reader entirely believe, beyond a broad framework of an issue, the words of a writer who's stationed in a country where English isn't spoken and who is at the mercy of the local government's press office?

You can't.

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