Synopsis for
Shattered Glass (2003) More at IMDbPro »

It tells the story of Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen), who was the youngest journalist at the New Republic. This magazine is known as the official magazine found in Air Force One, used by the president of the United States. Stephen's direct boss and editor is Charles "Chuck" Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), whose job it is to ensure reporter integrity, by adhering to journalistic standards.

Stephen's honesty is first questioned because of an article about a Republican young people convention, where they allegedly got drunk, called some prostitutes and half-wrecked the room. Stephen admits to the errors and offers to resign his job, Chuck declines the offer and Stephen remains.

Stephen's girlfriend is Caitlin Avey (Chloë Sevigny), a fellow journalist at the newspaper. Stephen is freelancing and writing stories for another magazines, like Rolling Stone, because his news stories have always got a different edge to them. In the small row they have over this matter, Stephen blames his parents, who follow the peer pressure of their friends and think that a lawyer is the most prestigious job in the world.

One of Stephen Glass' most successful stories is about how hardware and software companies try to stop hackers from damaging their products and programs. Stephen says he saw a computer company hire and paid one million dollars to a hacker so that he would stop breaking their security system at a computer-geek convention. The hacker signed the contract and then boasted about it in front of everybody at the convention. While Stephen is telling this story at the newspaper's meeting room, all journalists and editors sitting together deciding what news lines to follow, he jumps on the meeting table and shouts "show me the money, show me the money" with a cocky attitude. Everybody knows this is the best news story for years, and they all wonder "where he gets these characters from". In a later scene, Caitlin is trying to copy Stephen's sense of humor, but Chuck tells her to stick to what she does best: glossing figures, explaining in plain words economic concepts and situations, and being serious and formal when writing her reports. Stephen's story goes to print.

In the Forbes internet magazine, Adam Penenberg (Steve Zahn) is responsible for all the high-tech content of the internet subscription magazine, and tries to verify the content of the article. Adam calls Chuck asking for facts, names and phone numbers. Adam soon finds out things which don't add up. He can't find the person who was paid the million dollars, nobody has ever heard of the company, there are no records of the convention.

He calls Chuck and Stephen once again. Stephen fabricates the ghost-company's website, but he doesn't realize that he put it in a net section which could only be seen by AOL subscribers. Stephen admits that he may have made a mistake over some minor details on the story, but he insists on the truth of the main article. This time, Chuck starts to get the idea that something fishy may be going on. Although he doesn't dismiss Stephen's work as fake yet, this time the journalist is not going to find it so easy to move on.

Caitlin supports and defends Stephen. As many more untruthful details spring to view, Chuck insists on being taken to the location where that computer-geek convention took place right away. Stephen feels unsure, and tries to talk his way out of it, but this time to no avail. Chuck comes to realizes that there are many problems with Stephen's story: the hotel where it was celebrated does not know anything about a convention of that kind, the actual room where it was supposed to have taken place is not big enough to accommodate the huge number of people Stephen says he himself saw, etc... More and more details appear missing.

The pressure increases, especially on Chuck. Chuck starts re-reading Stephen's ediorial contributions, this time with a view to finding strange details, unlikely events, non-existent names of people and companies, dates which don't hold up, etc. Caitlin talks to Chuck. She is really upset when Stephen gets fired, and she is disappointed because Chuck and higher levels of management are not standing by Stephen. Chuck talks to her, saying that everybody believed what Stephen said because they all liked him, and that she should use her journalistic instincts to find out whether Stephen had been lying or not.

This makes Caitlin think, and she admits that Chuck is right: they all had been fooled by Stephen's charm and his news bombshells. The New Republic will write an editorial retracting in almost half of Stephen Glass' news stories, and even admitting to some data in some further articles cannot be confirmed. Stephen will become a Law graduate.