Should you believe everything you read? Today Farz tells the story of journalist Stephen Glass who made up a fantastic tale of hackers, data breaches, and early internet scare tactics! It was many years ago but Glass's life is still ruined. We talk about how the media can take a story, and without proper evidence or investigation ruin real people's lives. T/W Sexual Assault - This story was inspired by "You're Wrong About"'s reporting on The Duke Lacross Team case. We recommend checking out their episode - https://open.spotify.com/episode/41u0MLCM86ikQ4HPORsSJa
Should you believe everything you read? Today Farz tells the story of journalist Stephen Glass who made up a fantastic tale of hackers, data breaches, and early internet scare tactics!
T/W Sexual Assault - This story was inspired by "You're Wrong About"'s reporting on The Duke Lacross Team case. We recommend checking out their episode - https://open.spotify.com/episode/41u0MLCM86ikQ4HPORsSJa
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
[Music] in a matter of the people of the State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my
fellow Americans ask not what your country can
do for you ask what you can do for your country boom there we go we are
recording I know we just turned off our video but I'm going to turn mine on for a second um because I have girls SC
cookies I have them at my house now so I'm GNA eat during while you're talking I'm gonna eat one Thin Mint one
Adventure full and one peanut butter Patty and I'm very excited and I will also put our QR code up on our um in our
Instagram because I have no shame and if you're in the US you can order girl cookies from my daughter and they will be delivered to your house they are
great I always end up getting the um the Box thing I don't know what it is but
it's basically this beautiful giant very nicely crafted box that they send you
and it comes with I don't even know like eight eight or 10 different options in there it's actually a really really good
good thing and every year that's one I get and I love them and love donating or not donating Ian I'm getting something
for my money but supporting the girls supporting the girls supporting the troop supporting Flo and uh what do they
get Space Camp is that what it is um horse camp horse camp even better yep um
so yeah she's gonna go to horse camp by herself for a week over the summer which is going to be heartbreaking for me but
fun for her I'm sure sure it'll be an absolute blast um so cool we're going to
go ahead and Dive Right In I'm actually a Taylor I'm I'm on a little bit of an expedited schedule today so you'll have
to you'll have to embrace the banter we have throughout this episode as opposed to Banter in the beginning and end but I
do suspect there'll be some rich banter in this one Taylor so prepare yourself all right I'm ready okay wait did you do
an intro I'm sorry oh yeah sorry this is do to fail thank you I'm far I'm joined
here by Taylor we are the co-hosts of this podcast and we love producing for you and hopefully youall like listening
to it um and yeah uh we we'll go ahead and today I'm going to start things off
before we go over to Taylor um I have again shifted the entire framework of
what we are supposed to be talking about here and I'm getting a little bit even more abstract with it obsessed so Taylor
I've mentioned to you that one of my favorite podcasts ever is you're wrong about right you've heard that name yeah
they just see that I just posted on our Instagram that one of my friends texted me and said we're filling the hole in her heart when she stopped listening to
your wrong about why did she did she stop listening to it because Michael left it's I I didn't ask but I feel like
maybe so tell your friend this tell your friend so Michael Hobbs is um a Seattle
based journalist and reporter and he's absolutely incredible his hot takes on things are some my favorite to listen to
ever and he started your wrong about with Sarah Marshall Sarah Marshall is great as well so no shade there she
still runs you're wrong about but Michael did move on to another podcast called well he moved on to several one
is called maintenance space so I don't like that one very much so I'm not going to really plug that one but tell your
friend that if they are interested in more Michael Hobs hot takes um his new
podcast is called if books could kill books could kill it is co-hosted with
this other um podcaster who now I'm obsessed with as well but they basically review books and talk about like what
you know the one they just did on Art of the deal is just so good it's so funny
their hot takes on Donald Trump's perspective on things is just really really I i' probably relisted that same
episode four or five times in the past two weeks and that's High Praise from someone who said several times that he
doesn't read I know you don't have to read because Michael breaks it down for you incredibly effective ways so yeah
tell your friend if you're listening check out that podcast because you'll grow absolutely upset with it you'll care about books you didn't even know
existed so um but the reason I bring it up is because again kind of a recap of
what you're wrong about is all about has to do with again the hosts are millennials around our age and they like
to look at events that were instrumental to us as we were growing up in our
childhoods and come back and revisit them with a little bit more Nuance more
detail now that time has passed and kind of the med consumer consumption element of events
can kind of die down a little bit you can actually just purely look at the facts and they'll point out what we
might have wrongly assumed about those events mostly given that Sarah Marshall
and Michael Hobbs are on the media side of things they're mostly coming at from
a perspective of an indictment on the media and the Press because we get things wrong because the media has their
typ Ty Al they have a greater interest in getting our attention than it does in later on going back and correcting the
public record you know once you sold the paper you really don't necessarily care about going back and trying to say oh well maybe we sens sensationalize
something right so the host basically just go through and just dissect these moments
and pick out parts of events that you probably didn't remember or forgot about
and every time I listen to an episode I completely I I realized that I've completely forgotten and totally missed
all the important details of major events that are part of our childhood in some way shape or form which I always
found really interesting so this last one that I listened to I relistened to again I there's only like 60 podcasts
I've relisten like 100 times at this point but the one that I just relistened to that put me down the rabbit hole of
the topic I'm going discussing today had to do with the Duke lacrosse case that happened when Taylor I think you and I
would have been in college I think it was 20067 somewhere around there and they highlight a few key
points about it obviously the biggest problem with that case was that none of
it was actually true but despite it not being true the case ended up gaining a significant
amount of momentum and National rep media attention and the reason that you're wrong about highlights for that
specifically is first and foremost you have an overz prosecutor and Mike Nong
and that's important because that piece feeds the piece that we're really
talking about here the second part of this which is the media itself so they obviously had an interest in
revving this thing up um despite the lack of evidence despite the lack of
credibility despite once you again listen to the podcast they'll break it down for you and you're like how did
this ever reach the light of day like it's shocking that something so obviously transparently not accurate or
not true ended up becoming this National mail stor maom but the biggest reason
why that was was the media obviously had an intention in trying to build up this case and I'm going to get into the
reasons for that why here in a second before I do I want to start off by saying that I am going to do my episode
as an indictment of the media and the Press but that being said I'm so not a
fake news guy like I I think that the vast majority of journalists are doing
the right thing and they're trying to further the public discourse by objectively reporting facts but as with
literally any other profession there is some percentage that falls into this
deviant Behavior category that happens with anything that happens with doctors
with you know lawyers you you name it so so I'm gonna call out some of this stuff
but it's not meant to be a overarching indictment of of the press so when public perception and
media narrative kind of meet in a real world example it's almost certain that we the consumers of that media and the
media itself come together to kind of form a hive mind regardless of the truth of the narrative that's really what the
legacy of the Duke La Cross case has has been and it's even more interesting because once you revisit these things
you realize how obviously patently false they are in you g talk about the details
of that or other things the details of the L Duke case yeah
no okay no no I mean look there's so much content around the dupler pr case
that I don't even feel the need to like go like again every this has been poured over to death like there's nothing that
hasn't been I mean Mike Nong was dispar like I mean people were like the the the woman
who made the accusations she's in prison right now for murder first or second degree murder like like
every like the boys who were charged have moved on to becoming lawyers and whatever like like it is it is so
obviously it it was I mean the reason he was disbarred was because he literally
had exonerating evidence on those kids and didn't report that out to the defendants um legal team and so that was
the reason why he ultimately was dispar because he literally had DNA evidence that would have been exculpatory for
them and he hit it and so he was trying to get these kids
convicted he was like doing whatever he could so anyway I'm not going to go into the dup cross case I'm gonna I'm using
that as kind of the Lynch pin of how I kind of started going down this rabbit hole because it touches on the second
thing that I came across because I started with a du case I wanted the next one the next one and in 2014 some of youall may remember I totally remember
reading this case in the Rolling Stones called um they published an article called a rape on campus and I read it at
the time in 2014 when it was released and I reread it again after I started
going into the dupli cross case and my first reaction to it was like how did any of us believe this [ __ ] like it was
so obviously ply clearly made up it was about UVA it was again I can go into the
details what folks want to if you specifically Taylor want to ask questions about it because I reread this thing was like clearly this didn't
happen like it was so like the over-the-topness of it was was was so
that article rape on campus that was published um by the Rolling Stone on November 19th of
2014 by 20 by November 24th the most prominent journalist to First questions
veracity this guy named Richard Bradley was like this is obviously [ __ ] he wrote an article about this about why
it's [ __ ] and he also pointed out the fact that it was there was other cases that were very similar to this
except they were handled right and they were handled well that you could have pointed to but they pointed to this UVA
case that couldn't be verified and and all that stuff and he kind of broke it down in terms of why you should be able
to smell [ __ ] when you see it so he broke it down into uh the Hallmarks of [ __ ] being that it is outlandishly
sensationalized or two it plays into public perceptions of Campus culture or
the public Zeitgeist mhm three the details are obscured for reasons that on first glance would sound justifiable to
the public but a real journalist would know it's insufficient given the claims that were made in the story and
ultimately that story was retracted a few months later Rolling Stones issued a retraction they apologized everybody got
sued lives were ruined people it was the the impact of it was pretty dramatic one
thing that was I was super pissed out about after I was like going into the details on this so the author and the
journalist who published that story her name is Sabrina elderly she she did get sued by the University president of UVA
and she did get like a 2.2 million judgment against her or something something along those lines but
otherwise like she's great like she's still working she has like multiple media Empires that are like how how is
this like okay anyways whatever like so I bring up this Richard Bradley guy in this UVA case because Richard Bradley
has unique level of insight into these things because he was the chief editor at George magazine in the 1990s and he
fell victim to another famous froster probably the most famous froster when it
comes to journalistic ethics a guy named Stephen glass have you heard of this guy I don't know I feel like maybe but I
don't know yeah tell me yeah that's that's our topic of discussion for today because again I went back reading this
guy's articles and was like we believe this [ __ ] like I think like that's that's what I main take with but
like going forward anytime I read something I'm just like there's this feels a little bit too Sensational it's
probably going to be [ __ ] and yeah and that was like the the case with with
what was going on here so I'm GNA go into a little bit about like what you know his life what he did and all that
stuff and how the outcomes what the outcomes were but really it is this is one example of many so there's another
example Steven glass and guy named Jason Blair had the distinction of being kind
of the two top tier like they just bullshitted their way through everything
they basically ruined the reputations of massive massive institutions within our news media outlets and so they need to
be called out for that but I'm G to focus on Stephen glass in this one so he is a former journalist who worked for
the new Republic in 1998 till have you ever read the new Republic are you familiar with that magaz think so okay
so the new Republic is a progressive leaning political it is political and
nature and mostly left leaning um it has the distinction of being kind of like
the snobby magazine of the time like they held themselves up to a pretty high standard one thing that you'll you'll
see if you watch the movie that's based on this is that they gloat a lot that they're the um only magazine that
is updated and kept on Air Force One and so they hold themselves up to a pretty
high standard and let everybody know that that's kind of the reputation for the May 18th edition of
the magazine which actually gets released on May 6th I don't know how magazines work and why that is but that's yeah it's always was early I
don't know why yeah yeah so the new Republic published a story by glass entitled hack
Heaven which told glass's firsthand account of interacting with a particularly talented young guy he was a
15-year-old but like I mean right now we would call him Tech Bros but back then hackers was the thing like it was like
everything was hackers yeah you like believed that was possible I know I know there's like a dude at like a thing oh
my God have you seen have you seen hackers recently the movie no not recently so I saw it like I don't know
in the past five years but it's with Sandra bulock right and in the beginning she like hacks her computer to be able
to order a pizza and it's like hilar ious and like mindboggling you know that
she can do that it's really really funny yeah it's it's kind of De kenian what people think hackers are capable of
doing and I'm gonna kind of go into that here in a minute give look up Sandra block while you're
talking while you're on hold but you guys know what I'm talking so so it was it was Swordfish was
one it was so popular oh maybe I'm thinking of swordfish you might be thinking of swordfish and halberry no
I'm definitely thinking about Sandra Bullock but um anyway the net maybe the
net I'm thinking of the net yeah so like so but yeah totally we didn't know what it was we didn't know what it was all
those movies kind of came out at the same time this was going on and like that gets into like kind of like the Hallmarks of [ __ ] that we're going
to get into here in a minute but basically I read the original story hack
heaven and immediately the alarm Bells were sounding off in my head of like
this is obviously [ __ ] like what it reads like is how is what every 70-year-old thinks technology works or
how they think it works the partent details that I broke down to three very simple bullet points
are the story starts with a 15-year-old boy named Ian wrestling sitting across from Executives from a tech company
based out of pal Alto called juked micronics micronics he's screaming to the executives about wanting a Miata a
trip to Disneyland a Playboy magazine he wants him to quote show him the money
Noe this is two years um after Jerry McGuire had come out so so stupid okay
so stupid well thir B point is they're there because two months prior Ian
hacked I used quotation marks into juke's database and publish the salary
of all their employees on their homite along with some nude photographs of random
women okay so that right there that what I just read you is a synopsis of two
paragraphs of this article hack heaven and almost immediately it was like now
you know it's [ __ ] but it should have been clear to anybody that read this it was [ __ ] so basically these Executives come to
visit Ian to offer him a job to fix their security issues because he's so incredibly talented this 15-year-old who
can just do incredible things with just a keyboard and a mouse um and that's kind of what prompts his whole um neata
rant I will say that first off things like bug bounties are actually real but
but a system that is designed like this where access to the admin panel of a website or CMS to publish salaries on
somehow also gets you into a thirdparty proprietary system where salary information HR data is kept that would
require so many companies failing at the exact same time and the exact same ways
in basic Internet Protocol right this wouldn't be connected they wouldn't be connected like had nothing to do with
each other I looked this up there was two m primary companies in 1998 that were responsible for baging payroll
because the only options are either you do it yourself by hand on a ledger which
means it's not accessible by the internet or you do it on a spreadsheet which is local which is not tied to the
internet or you do it through a third-party proprietary software company one of the two that I looked up that were still active in 1998 which again
how would you get into their systems like how does getting into their systems have anything to do with you getting into a website CMS admin they're not
connected right so the way the way like a typical
bug Bounty program works is that you discover something that basically shouldn't have happened and then you report it out and the company pays you
out a bunch of money so a very simple example of this is learning that like oh in a URL that might have like V3 in the
string you change it to V4 and then it givs you access as like a part of the site that was supposed to be hidden
we're supposed to be like direct access like it's it's stupid [ __ ] like that like it's not
like I was able to like log into the nsa's website and like that does happen
so but I understand it because like elderly people like always think that like like H if I if I log into Amazon on
my computer will they be able to see my bank account it's like they're not tied to each other totally there's no
connection but especially in the 90s I mean we were trying to make it scary
like to your point you know the media like trying to make it scary yeah in this article hack K Glass goes on to
discuss how states are basically handling this and noting the difficulty in Catching people like Ian because
companies are just constantly offering them deals and instead of turning them in so he brings up a uniform code like
the US has a ton of uniform codes it's basically a way for like cross Commerce or cross state Commerce Communications
with folks so like for example we have a unified code for contracts because you don't want a contract you don't want
like Texas's contracts to not look like Florida's contracts right you need some
uniformity there and so there's a ton of these around and what glass is describing here has to do with a uniform
code that would have this kind of cooperation to punish companies across States if they pay hackers instead of
trying to report them that's the idea he talks about these hackers basically pushing pushing an agenda of
their own via some sort of lobbying arm that sounds like complete utter [ __ ] glass puts himself in the pasture seat
for the hacker conference he attends and he attends this with Ian and he paints his picture of everyone of this
conference basically high-fiving Ian talking about how amazing he is this paragraph also quotes the mom saying how
proud of him she is so I guess his mom was also in attendance while everybody he's basically praising this kid and at
the end of it they announced that Ian will be getting an $81,000 payout along with some high value comic books and
Ian's bragging about how just before he showed to this event he'd actually froze in the bank accounts of a major company
and everybody just starts cheering and like that's how the story ends so stupid it's so it's like cringe it's like weird
it's like I can feel the hair standing up reading so like I also feel like so you know when you started talking you
know it's definitely like the the the examples that you have about like sexual assault you know there's tons about you
know we need to believe people when they say that that's something bad happened to them you know and we need to like you know do the due diligence but it's
definitely you know you it's part of the media's responsibility to not like accuse people who have not
been you know tried in a court you know what I mean well the sexual assault example is literally the corlar to this
in our modern times as the internet was when swordfish was coming out right like
like there's a thing that happens in the public sentiment and then anything that is a
bias towards affirmation of that thing it is right for the media to
sensationalize and build up Beyond it despite there being evidence or not yeah
and well I think it's it's it's you know a big deal to to um you know today
because of what happened this week with Trump and een Carol you know and I saw something like some the New Yorker
posted reposted a a uh a cover that they had her on it and people in the comments
were like she's a liar you know over and over again I was just like this is so gross you know it's been like proven in
court like stop it so yeah yeah it's it's it's never going to go so here's
thing like there's some things that seem to persist and there are other things that are snap shots on time as I was
like researching all of this I also completely forgot about the insane
sensationalization in the media U firing off on Valerie Plame and her h hband Joe
Wilson do you remember this no right after in the runup to the Iraq
War so like right after this stuff that we're talking about here the public sensationalization shifted from the the
internet culture to the Iraq War in September 11th and it was under the
offices of that that at the time s Libby later was determined to be Richard arm
Armitage released publicly the information that Valerie PL was an undercover CIA operative because they
were trying to get back at her husband who published an article that he went to
Nigeria and realized that Iraq was not trying to buy yellow cake uranium like it was a whole thing and then and then
all of a sudden you have this couple in Washington DC who were just basically living their lives and like now are in
the center of this National like it so you're right
that destroys lives yeah yeah yeah stuff this destroys lives and like it's like
the incentive structures aren't well aligned the incentive structure is some there's a lot of Buzz happening about a
certain Topic in a moment let's grab anything we can that has to do with that
topic the sexual assault thing is really interesting because Richard Bradley actually pointed out that if that that
person what's her name Sabrina whatever the one who wrote the UVA story The Rolling Stones one if she wanted to she
could have literally done almost that Story in real life because a few years
prior to the story that she made up there for the UVA case there was the exact same assault story for Vanderbilt
with like two or three college football like football players who were charged and arrested but the reason they all
that happened was because it was immediately reported the student body took immediate action the administration
took immediate action like everybody acted right you know like like that wasn't a story that was trying to be
told the story that was trying to be told was like this happens Nobody Does the right thing it's all that's why
people like the University president F lawsuits because they were like you lied like none of this happened in your
implication about what we did or didn't do wasn't true totally so I'm gonna get
going back to the the story The the evening last piece of this if y'all want like the story itself is actually only
two pages long it's super easy to digest just Google the word hack heaven Stephen glass original and there's a website the
sub subdomain is it's like WP do um. lps.org and it'll come up like it's very
simple to find it'll take like 10 minutes to read it um it's worth a read because you'll see how insane it is
actually read it how stupid it sounds yeah right right so and again like kind
of what I referred to earlier like this kind of captures kind of the public perception of the time like the internet's gaining
traction kids are getting rich everything seems insecure like I don't I don't get what's going on but
everybody's on it like it's a real strange nebulous universe of the
economy that nobody really totally understands I think that's what Drew this author Stephen glass to kind of
sensationalized it and try to capitalize on it so I feel like um there's also
like I remember the first time I saw someone like blatantly lying like on my space you know and I was like oh my God
people lie on here you know like obviously I know that now but like then I was like someone was like oh I like
designed this dress and it was obviously a dress that like I'd seen somebody saw us I knew they hadn't done it and I was like oh people lie here you know that's
scary and weird I know I I love the ones the the memes you see where somebody gets like offended at something online
and then the next post is like is this your first day on the internet yeah exactly but my first day on the Internet
it's weird yeah yeah yeah and I'm gonna I'm gonna get to a lot of
um the the lying piece of this is like the most fascinating P this because it plays in like a Psy psychology that I
can't even begin to understand so the story gets published um
and it's huge it's like really widely praised like at the time it was like what it was just like all these other stories I just mentioned you looking
like whoa that's this is like crazy like you just you we learn about like these kids who can do this stuff we learn
there's a hackers Association an advocacy group a conference we learned that companies are shelling big money we
learn there's a uniform code like this a lot of stuff that's that's coming out on this and so people were pretty um
interested in it except there was one competing reporter who read the story
and was like this sounds like [ __ ] so in 1988 Forbes digital arm
was called Forbes digital tool that was like the they're kind of credit as being like the first internet magazine or
Internet journalist or whatever whatever you want to call it before then like and
and you don't get a lot of credibility for that right the oldtime magazines and newspapers that's like where real
journalism is done and so Forbes was trying trying this out and at the time it was like eh we don't really we're not
really it's not really reputable not like the new Republic it was nothing like the new Republic reputation wise so
they were basically the equivalent the modern equivalent of like I would say CNET and Tech crunch but now those are
basically just places to go see advertisements for things that they want to sell you instead of like actual news but in the old days like that's kind of
what it would have been uh as a result it means that like they are primarily focused on Tech news right like that's kind of
like their wheelhouse um kind of like those other organizations they looked at this
article and they deduced several things they looked at it and said that okay so
you have legislation being contemplated by 21 states who address digital security there's a hacker Lobby
somewhere there's a conference they all get to together and they also bring along with them some of the highest
earning people out of Silicon Valley as the executives to kind of award prizes and hire the most desirable kids
basically The Talented desirable sounds gross in that context um so a journalist
from Forbes named Adam pennenberg started digging into this and starts finding some
irregularities he starts looking into it and looking at from the perspective like I'm a tech journalist like all I do is
this stuff like he's just like how on Earth have I never heard of any of this and then you have like the number one
political magazine in the country that knows this stuff like how's it even possible right why don't I know yeah
exactly uh it was almost like shocked the so there's a movie about this I'm reference later and the way it looks is
that his editor Adam's editor says why didn't you get this story like how on Earth did these guys get the story and
you didn't and I think that was kind of the first point when he was like it has to be [ __ ] like I've had those moments before where somebody says like
why didn't you do this thing I was like if it if I didn't do it first it was probably [ __ ] oh my God totally
can't be done um totally so he starts by learning that Jukes micronics has no
digital presidence or registration with the California Franchise Tax Board the only result return for juked using
Alexis xus search was literally just that article by the the new
Republic at a later date they do discover a website and it it's hilarious you can actually find this website if
you do a search for it um there's an image that you can pull up of it and it's basically just pure HTML and also it is hosted on a server that
is only accessible to AOL members so it's it's almost like a geoc c's kind of a site like a Facebook like imagine like
a business running just on Facebook it's kind of like what it was nobody at the conference that is
basically the conference that enforces uniform state laws heard of any sort of new code being proposed for Digital
internet security and nobody could unearth any information about the existence of this hackers convention or
any sort of advocacy or Association of hackers so should also be like that's on
purpose because they're mysterious does he say that but but his so one why
article yeah but his point is like if anybody would have known about this it's
me right no AB like if I never heard of it then it's impossible that this guy
who like before then if you read his his content which we're going to get to later on it's all political in nature
like his last article which turned out to be another one of the ones that ends up being complete [ __ ] um God what
was it called break it was called Spring breakdown it had to do with glass
attending the RNC convention and then going up to the hotel rooms of some of
the staffers of the RNC and just like he was talking about hookers and drugs and
just all this crazy stuff happening which like probably has happened yeah
like but like he didn't witness any of it he just he just like thought it would make a good story and we're going to
later learn that's one of the stories that end up being totally false um but that's his background his background is
that kind of stuff it's political not like this stuff so Adam penenberg he
goes to Eder in Chief at the new Republic um his name is Charles Lane he goes by Chuck and he starts asking a
bunch of questions he asks for fact checks on certain details his take on it was Juke doesn't exist
there was no Conference of hackers there's no uniform code that is that we're aware of anybody has heard of and
the people you cite in the article don't seem to exist they actually looked at this Ian wrestling kid and were like there's no record of him at any public
school which I don't know how you even do that search but like they did that search they also referen like his agent
is a random guy that was in ATT tenance like apparently hackers have agents according to Glass and they could never
find that guy either there's a host of issues with this but yeah so this is
kind of when Chuck starts getting a little bit suspicious and it's worth noting that at the time glass was
incredibly well respected um not just at the new Republic but he was also he was a freelancer with rolling stone with
Harper with George he was a contributor to the NPR or not the but to NPR and in
a lot of ways you know what I looked at when I when you see how he kind of describes this kid Ian is it's kind of
how he would describe himself he was 24 years old at the time young upand cominging he was very popular like he
was just like he kind of was the show you show me the money kind of a guy um in his in his own little Universe oh my
God I already forgot about that but that's also so stupid so stupid I know I had to do a search I was like wait the
article came out when when did J McGuire come out it's like come on come
on SO despite all that Chuck uh his editor decides to go through with the
story with glass using a fine Toth comb and figure out what what might these issues be that the Forbes journalist is
kind of calling out he asked glass for all of his sources which are all self-reported which is really important
and glass provides to him basically all the details that he asked for the
numbers of people the addresses all this stuff including the information of the
executive of Juke micronics who is the one who basically tells him he can get him whatever he wants get this and
whatever he wants later on then guy the juked executive basically calls back
Chuck and yells at him and tells him I'm piss of you for publishing a story just never talk to me again whatever and then
when Chuck reaches out to this kid Ian via email the kid also replies angly saying don't ever contact me again this
story was embarrassing basically that's all he hears back from these sources the Forbes journalists start
pointing out the weirdness of all this and as they do Chuck rows more and more suspicious every asks from glass for
confirmation of something was met with it's in my notes that was it you just say it's in my notes I'll find it it's in my notes which means he was going
home and writing it in his notes to come back the next day and give him the notes look I WR this down it's all real
because I wrote it down eventually this when this is oh man So eventually Chuck
tells glass that they're going to go to bethesa Maryland which is where he says the hacker conference took place there
like I said there's a movie starring Peter sarsgard as Chuck and hating Christ as glass and they both do
unbelievably good jobs of this in this movie and this scene is one of the most
tense the scene way they go to the hotel is one of the most tense I've ever seen in the entire movie you want to start ripping your nails out watching it it's
one of the most underrated scenes I think in movie history it's actually free right now on Amazon Prime if you
have Amazon Prime video I go check it out it's called shattered glass man it is it is a build up to this point where
you just want to start ripping your hair out when you see them in this hotel and you realize what's going on the tension
lasts like 10 minutes and it's just like you won't you won't breathe you won't talk to anybody you won't breath just like be staring to the screen it's so
good so in in real life and in the movie they jump in glass his car and he drives
them to a random hotel in PESA Maryland you never been to this hotel he just
sees a hotel he pulls in says this is where the conference was they go up to the conference space
and in the article glass said the conference took place on a Sunday night weird which is really weird like man that's a weird lie like I yeah that's
weird that would never that's yeah that would never happen it would never happen it's like at least get better at lying I
think I don't know so they get up to the space it's Sunday and Chuck asks an
employee about like whether he remembers a few weeks back of conference happening and this employee tells him like no
couldn't have happened event space is closed on Sundays and then I mean again like in the movie glass is like I was
here I know I was here like you know he just keeps oh it's so tense so
good so he so Chuck is like obviously like super pissed off at this point like
this is becoming more and more obvious busho he like tell tell me where uh the
juked executives and Ian went to discuss this deal he's like it's a restaurant across street we went there for dinner
and so he walks across the street finds a random restaurant like yep that's the one as they walk up they see a sign on
the door saying that the restaurant is closed after three on Sundays and so that's kind of like when it starts do
any research before you start lying yeah seriously it's like you just at least
you got to trace your steps a little bit Yeah so it was shortly after all this
that Chuck also learns that the person from juked who called him angrily was actually gl's brother I yeah I try to
dig up a any info on how he actually pieced that together the movie makes it
seem as though Peter sarsgard character kind of piec it together with random info like somebody mentioned that the
business was in pal Alto somebody else mentioned that glass's brother went to Stanford like it was like one of those
it's not super clear and I couldn't find any facts on how they pieced it together but they did so with all that know knowledge um
Chuck fires him um and he goes to the reporters in The Newsroom to tell him
why he was doing this and by this point they all basically had agreed that it was obvious he was lying and that they
needed to start sifting through all the other magazines and other articles that he'd written to figure out what was what what was true and what wasn't ultimately
they retract 27 of 41 of his articles and those are just the ones that they
know for sure are fabricated the other 14 could have been fabricated too but they couldn't confirm
it he also wrote like I said for George Harper and Rolling Stones and they also
had to issue retractions it's interesting because the one from Harpers was the first retraction they had issued
in 165 years kind of wild yes wild um
glass ultimately ends up telling his story in a Vanity Fair article and it's called shatter glass same as the film
and he basically is like I'm sorry I was being like I was you know like he basically just apologizes like he just
what what his argument was was when he was one of the earlier articles that he worked on he tried to make it a little
more Sensational and he made something up and people responded well to it he was like well then I just realized if I
just like kept doing this then people are going to like my stuff for him he just kept doing it like great books yeah which he did he wrote a book called The
Fabulous actually which is literally a story about a journalist who just fakes articles but he did it after though
right he did it after yeah okay good I'm like that would have been all too much all too on the nose
yeah yeah so since then he obviously is no longer hirable as a journalist um and
he was already in law school in Georgetown when all this kind of started coming out one thing to know about being a lawyer is before you take any exam to
like actually pass a bar exam you take a character and fitness evaluation so you have to submit all your information to
the State Bar you want to practice in they have to determine whether you have the required Fitness to be a lawyer
primarily not doing anything that has deception as part of its back ground so
anybody who's committed any sort of fraud or acts of dishonesty that are criminal in nature they never get
licensed good I like that yeah yeah and so in this case this wasn't actually a
crime but he still can't get barred so he's as of the last time he tried to
submit his application for lure to the Supreme Court of California was 2014 and as of that time the Supreme Court came
back was like nope still not going to license you and so he by all accounts just kind of works like a clerk like a
law clerk um in California he lives in West Hollywood apparently uh and that's
kind of been his Destiny since I mean he made this mistake when he was 24 years old in 1998 that was what
like 27 years ago and wow he's still kind of like this unemployable [ __ ]
nobody basically yeah it's like a life ruiner but the main thing that like
again there's so many many of these stories that I looked up if you look up like the most fraudulent journalist
again generally speaking journalists are trying to do the right thing this type of behavior is incredibly deviant like
bottom 1% of human beings do this type of [ __ ] but if you read something and it seems outlandish it's probably not true
yeah just like use your judgment you know like do other sources as well you know and I and I definitely feel like I
feel the media is so crazy right now and everyone's so mad at each other and everything is so like you know this and
this and this and it's just like a terrible place right now and there's people who like you know only watch the
this you know news is very very harmful all sorts of weird shit's happening
right you know and like so that's a good reminder to be like you know you can live in your
bubble and um you know that yeah yeah
you know you should you know whatever yeah just just nothing is 100% true one
way or the other just use your own judgment essentially um but yeah that's
my story today Taylor thanks for rushing through this with me you know I gotta hop and run um but we'll go ahead and
give some shout out for our um email please write to us at dopod gmail.com or
reach out to us via the socials at doelp pod is there anything that you want to lead us off with Taylor um oh I just
want to say my friend that I mentioned earlier um she just started listening and it she was really fun she sent me a
text messages she'll sisten to like six episodes yesterday she was like I'm going through my emails and I saw your email and I started to listen and she
really liked it so thank you to to Morgan and um yeah like when it's really
exciting when when people like pick it up and they're like oh no I really like this so I appreciate it love it thank
you thanks for listening and we will be back in a few days with our next episode thanks foris awesome thanks Taylor I'm g
go and cut it
off