Jayson Blair & Stephen Glass
Jayson Blair was a Journalist for the New York times. In 2003 the New York Times broke their own story on Jayson Blair and his 600 articles that he plagiarized from other papers. "Blair reported news without actually being there, invented quotes from sources and created events out of thin air." (contentraven.com)
Jayson Blair "committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud". Known as "the low point in the 152 year history of the paper". He not only invented quotes from sources but also, "concocted scenes, and lifted material from other papers and wire services". "He selected detail from photographers to create the impression he had been somewhere or seen someone, when he had not." (nytimes.com)
Stephen Glass worked for The New Republic from 1995-1998. He invented quotations, sources, even entire events in articles that he wrote for The New Republic magazine. In the film Stephen Glass was portrayed as a young man, who was good at acting to get attention and acting to cover his trail. As a person he was fake, weird and a good "story" teller.
In the movie some phrases that he used over and over again were "Are you mad at me?" "It's probably nothing." "It's really stupid, huh?" "Okay, I'll get my notes." "It's in my notes." "I didn't do anything wrong." "He is a real person." "I talked to him thousands of times." etc.
Comparing the two reporters,
stuff they both did,
Invented events out of thin air,
Lifted material from other papers,
stuff Glass did,
had his brother on the other end of phone calls to cover his tracks,
took his boss to the place where "events" were held,
lied to his friends and kept saying it was true even after he got caught,
stuff Blair did,
lifted material from wire services,
selected detail from photographers to create the impression he had been somewhere or met someone.
Don't You D.A.R.E.
In this article by Glass I think he got away with it because, he had info that seemed legit. He also used info that seemed like it could be real. He used little facts and added small details that just added to the seen and made it seem like he was actually there. He used little details to add leverage to his story.
He put people in the story, most who didn't even exist. He made up an entire drug administration program.