Michael Finkel: In 2001 Michael Finkel wrote a story about child labor's in Mali. However when he got there he relied it was much more complicated. He fictionalized a boy from interviews with many laborers. When he returned inconsistencies were spotted in the story and he was fired. Shortly after this he found out that a man, Christian Longo, who killed his three children and wife was pretending to be him. Finkel was interested and contacted the man. Longo was a fan of Finkel's work and that's why he chose to use his identity. Finkel admits in "True Story" that he lied many times to make himself look better or appear less ordinary. Longo was found guilty and Finkel's book was published in 2005.
I think that Steven Glass got what he deserved for what he did. I think that the fact checking process definitely needs to change and the people the stories are written about should be proved real. Something that could help would be if it was mandatory to have a picture of them included. "Shattered Glass" changed my perspective because I didn't know that someone could so easily print false stories and it makes me wonder how many more there are out there that we don't know about.
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