Shattered Glass

The movie is out on home format now, so I rented the DVD, watched the 60 Minutes interview, watched the movie, and watched the movie again with the commentary provided by the screenwriter/director and Charles Lane, who was a writer then the editor during the period of Glass' ficturnalism. Afterwards I went to the web to read the original Forbes coverage. This is Kambiz Foroohar's analysis written at the time. The movie makes him the editor of Forbes Online (which may well be accurate, but movies take liberties). This is Adam L. Penenberg's article on the New Republic piece which brought Glass down. As portrayed in the movie, Forbes is irked that they were scooped, and sets out to write a companion piece with a bit more meat for their business oriented readers. When they look at the story it comes apart in their hands. This is Penenberg's article on the Forbes revelation that the TNR story was no good.

I ended up at the Daily Standard's take, written by Jonathan V. Last. Last is not a sympathetic reviewer, because, I suspect he differs with TNR politically. While he points to all manner of charges against Glass from the Correspondence pages, I'd need to go back and read more of the correspondence to draw form conclusions about how telling these Last prints are. For myself, I would not be surprised if TNR doesn't find charges made by the college RNC, the American Conservative Union, and other similar groups to be disinterested. My old TNR's are in a box and I'll have to get them out at some point and take a look. I have seen some articles in TNR and other places generate heated correspondence, but as Last points out, its not one or even a few pieces that raise eyebrows, some issues are controversial, its that Glass had an unusual amount.

Its a interesting story. The movie was well done, neither sensational nor tedious. The actors were well chosen and interesting choices. I particularly enjoyed seeing Hank Azaria and Steve Zahn playing dramatic roles.