New Republic Associate Editor Stephen Glass Fired for Fabricating Stories

NETWORK NEWS May-June 1998

New Republic editor Charles Lane fired associate editor Stephen Glass on May 8, saying that a recent article by Glass about computer hackers was "a hoax." After further examination, the New Republic said that Glass had fabricated all of 6 and parts of 21 articles. He had written a total of 41 articles for the magazine over the last three years. Glass' lawyer, Gerson Zweifach, said that his client had confirmed the findings (Howard Kurtz, "New Republic Fires Writer Over `Hoax,'" Washington Post, May 11, 1998, p. D1; Robin Pogrebin, "Rechecking a Writer's Facts, A Magazine Uncovers Fiction," New York Times, June 12, 1998, p. A1).

Glass, 25, is a free-lance writer who had contracts with GQ, Rolling Stone, Harper's and George magazines. The magazines discontinued their contracts with Glass and conducted investigations of their own. He was attending law school in 1997-1998 at nights. Glass graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He worked as a staffer for the Heritage Foundation before starting at the in the New Republic in 1995.

Glass authored a highly critical article about scare tactics used by supporters of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) against DARE's critics in the March 3, 1997 New Republic. NewsBriefs cited that article in its special report about DARE in the May-June 1997 issue (Stephen Glass, "Don't You DARE," The New Republic, March 3, 1997, p. 18; Sara Rab, "The Debate Over Dare," NewsBriefs, May-June 1997).

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