I'm not good at poring over the Corrections box in the Washington Post, but Patrick Gavin of Mediabistro's FishBowl DC blog captures this priceless item about ye olde liberal New Republic scandal in today's "Corrections":
An Aug. 29 Business article incorrectly referred to Stephen Glass, subject of the movie "Shattered Glass," as a plagiarist. Glass did not steal material; he fabricated it.
Gavin suggested "Stephen Glass Calls the Post in Protest...or least we suspect that he did." For those of you to young to remember Glass's high-profile rise and fall, here's one example from our man Bozell on his so-called journalism:
First there was a slimy March 31, 1997 article on Generation X slackers hanging out at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or as the table of contents breathlessly promoted it "A lost weekend with conservatism's drunk, dejected and angry younger generation." Glass reported walking into the men's room and discovering "a wiry mustached twentysomething getting to second base with a svelte blonde...His face is buried between her breasts." That anecdote, believe it or not, was about the tamest tall tale in the piece, which recounted wild orgies and drug fests in hotel rooms while Trent Lott spoke below.
Everyone now knows what the CPAC organizers know all along: it was unbelievable because it was invented, a la Janet Cooke. What bothers David Keene, the head of CPAC, most, however, is that The New Republic had to know it wasn't true, either. "The editors at the time certainly had good reason to know what he was turning in wasn't true," Mr. Keene told me. "It boggles the mind that an editor wouldn't demand sourcing for a seemingly incredibly timed, perfectly scripted hit piece."
