Vol. 4, No. 874
(Originally posted in August, 1998)
New Republic Succumbs to Old, Despotic Tactic
by Allan R. Andrews
American Reporter Correspondent
Washington, D.C.
WASHINGTON
-- The New Republic magazine
is acting like an old despotic
regime trying to rewrite or at least sanitize history in its handling
of a reporter's fabricated stories.
Not only has The New Republic
apologized for the fabrications
of one of
its reporters, the magazine has now apologized to its online readers
and is purging its online archives of the stories written by the
offending writer, Stephen Glass.
Recall that Glass recently was fired from his job as an associate
editor with the magazine after it was discovered he had manufactured
characters and events in several of his feature stories for the
publication. Most notably, he wrote of a young computer "hacker"
who
had broken into a company's system. Both the hacker and the company,
it
turns out, were figments of Glass's imagination.
Glass went to great lengths to sustain the fabrication, creating
a
false host Web site for the fictional company and providing real
addresses for places where alleged meetings with his hacker sources
took place. When challenged, Glass first tried to defend his work
and
then confessed to the elaborate hoax.
While
I harbor nothing less than disdain for Glass's deceptions, I'm
bothered equally by the New Republic's effort to alter its history.
This strikes me as a baby step in the direction of Orwellian Newspeak
or the rewriting of history so often associated with despotic
rulers
and regimes. It is far from the image of a journal that historically
has defended the ideals of justice and mercy.
I am reminded of a story out of England involving two middle-aged
women
who filed suit because the government will not alter their birth
certificates that show they were born as males (Sheffield
and
Horsham vs. UK). Both women had gender-changing surgery and are
now
living as females.
One of the two complained that she is engaged and fears facing
embarrassment and ridicule when applying for a marriage certificate.
Both women claim they already suffered severe pain and undue hardship
when they applied for driver's licenses and were confronted with
the
discrepant information on their birth certificates. They are asking
the
court to force the government agencies to change the gender designation
on their birth certificates.
However much sympathy I can muster for these victims of having
been
born into what they felt and determined to be the wrong gender,
I
cannot muster any sympathy for their cavalier treatment of history.
There is no doubt that what is recorded on their birth certificates
is
a valid and true statement for what took place on that date in
that
year.
What has been altered is consequent to the reality of events recorded
on that date. What was male has become female, but that does not
alter
the facts of their births.
We
won't overcome national, racial, ethnic or gender prejudice by
altering items on a birth certificate, and the women's complaint
is
essentially about prejudice.
I don't know what the compassionate solution is for these women.
An
annotated birth certificate or a certificate with an asterisk
does not
fully solve the problems of explanation that must necessarily
follow
these transformed persons throughout their official lives. A changed
birth
certificate, however, is a lie.
Perhaps a special government office serving persons with unusual
personal histories, staffed with trained, compassionate and
understanding officers would be a solution and allow such persons
to
avoid embarrassment. The merciful societal understanding, which
would
ask, "What has gender to do with driving?" to our shame
is light years
removed from their problem.
To change the records established decades ago would be a tampering
with
history, a small but significant alteration of events as they
were
accurately recorded.
Similarly,
I think the editors at the New
Republic err in their desire
to quash the electronic record of their having been duped.
The facts stand. The castle was breached, and no amount of plastering
and painting to remove the fissures in the walls will alter the
facts
of history. By purging the online archive, they may be creating
a
greater deception for those historians depending on the legacy
they
store.
For a magazine that often prides itself in its liberal interpretation
of justice, the attempt to purge its electronic memory bank of
Stephen
Glass's deceptive writings contradicts its traditional stance.
Is the magazine now changing its dress to provide for the alteration
of
history?
New Republic editors might
argue the online archive is not the
print
archive and purging it doesn't matter that much. I resent such
a
stance, not only because of its implied insult to online journalism
and
research, but because it still smacks of tampering with a historical
record.
I doubt any of NR's editors would consent to such tampering with
other's historical documents. After all, where would it stop?
Suppose one suggested a purge of the archives of the New Republic
to
make it appear the United States won the struggle in Vietnam?
How about
mitigating the horror of the Holocaust? Why not rewrite the history
of
America to vindicate the harsh conquerors of the natives of the
land?
Our
goal as journalists and as historians is truth, and truth is not
served by our altering the documents of history.
What is it the editors of the New
Republic fear in the record
of their
failure to guard the gate of their copy desk?
Let them insert editor's notes. Let them place a dagger beside
the name
of Stephen Glass in every article he manufactured. But do not
excise
the electronic record.
In my estimation, the wiser editorial course would be to let the
record
of the magazine having been duped by a dissimulator stand as a
monument
to a resolve that such fraud will not occur again in its pages
while
these editors are guarding the gates.
Allan R. Andrews can be contacted at arandrews@aol.com