Nothing but the truth

There are some books you can’t put down and other books you can’t wait to put down. Into the latter category falls “The Fabulist.” Not only is it bad, it’s embarrassing.

The author is Stephen Glass, the journalist who back in 1998 admitted to lying in 23 articles he wrote for the respected New Republic. The film “Shattered Glass” is based on his downfall.

I’ve had his book for quite a while. It’s a whiny semi-autobiographical “novel” that, along with the movie, has catapulted Glass into the status of pop celebrity, fortifying a belief that the media are generally populated by people like him, who are willing to lie for the sake of career or to promote a personal agenda.

Oddly, Glass’ fame has also gathered him supporters, the way a notorious condemned prisoner might receive offers of marriage from women who don’t care that he’s a serial killer, just that he’s, well, popular.

Some of the sympathy for Glass emerges from the notion that the “system,” whatever that is, did him in: that there was too much pressure on one so young (25) and that in journalism there is too much emphasis placed on awards.

There is a word that would efficiently summarize my attitude toward that kind of nonsense, but I can’t use it. Journalism does involve pressure, but it’s a career of choice. You’re not drafted into it. If you don’t like pressure, get a job tending sheep.

I couldn’t bring myself to finish the book, so I can’t say that later on in his narrative Glass doesn’t rise to thrilling heights of self-examination that justify all the tears he sheds for himself in the earlier pages. I doubt, however, that he does.

I don’t usually read halfway through a book and then cast it aside. But in this case, I’m appalled by the notion that a guy like Glass can cash in on his disgrace by writing about it, thus reflecting our appetite for the bizarre and elevating him to the level of cult hero. He fooled his boss and humiliated a profession. Good for him!

Jayson Blair did it to the New York Times. Janet Cooke did it to the Washington Post. Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith did it to the Boston Globe. And Brian Walski, a photographer who altered a picture, did it to the Los Angeles Times. There’ve been other, less publicized, cases. I doubt that any media outlet is without sin. But usually the offenders sink out of sight, never to be seen, heard or read again.

A friend suggested jokingly that maybe I should make up an entire column, get caught and end up with a book and a movie deal. I could also cash in by making speeches for thousands of dollars on why writers lie and perhaps create a nonprofit organization to help newspaper reporters and columnists who have problems dealing with the truth.

It would be easy for one in my business or any business to shrug off an ethical failure in this age of simplifications by saying that everyone lies, so what’s the big deal? Politicians lie, CEOs lie, lawyers lie, cops lie and just about everyone in show biz lies to sustain their careers. And there are always reasons. Presidents lie in the “national interest,” writers lie to get jobs in television, lawyers lie to protect their clients, and women over 40 lie just to be considered viable.

We’ve done it to ourselves, that’s for sure. Truth doesn’t matter too much anymore, the way good manners don’t matter much anymore, the way morality doesn’t matter much anymore, the way intelligence doesn’t, I mean don’t, matter much anymore. We accept the easy path to achievement and thereby create the hot young journalists who turn out to be Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair and who write books about the kind of exploits that once would have caused them to whimper off into darkness and silence.

I didn’t mean to get so pontifical. I had just started off to say that “The Fabulist” is a lousy book and I’m sorry that a movie was ever made about Glass, because I know a lot of media-knockers are sitting back and grinning, comfortable with the knowledge that we’re all a bunch of, well, another word I can’t use because our editors respect your sensitivities, whether you know it or not. But you get my meaning.

We do care about you and whether or not, despite our transgressions, we can still count on your trust. And that’s the truth.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.