Mucho mistrust

I'm shattered today.

This may be because this is my first day back from a two week holiday (I invoke bloggers' bragging rights for that mention, but I promise no tedious traveler's tales).

More likely an explanation for my red-eyed Monday yawning is that I stayed up last night watching a horror movie.

This was no average horror movie - there were no globulous monsters enveloping screaming fraternity girls, or a hairy Lon Chaney baring teeth resembling a miniature porcelain alps - the horror here was in the mind.

As I supped my warm cocoa and hid cringing behind my Transformers duvet (Optimus Prime on one side Megatron on the other - you decide) a nightmarish vision unfurled on the screen in front of me.

Okay, by now I know you're thinking I'm leading you down the garden path, cunningly attempting to make you believe I was watching a nasty slasher flick only to whip back the curtain (I don't know why there's a curtain in the garden, maybe the tulips are shy) to reveal a childish flick called something like "The Fluffy Bunny Wunnies Visit Cuddle Land", and thus hilarity ensues.

But no, the film in question, Shattered Glass, genuinely did cause me to break out in a cold sweat, if only because the very concept was such a horrific one for any journalist to witness.

The plot follows the true story of The New Republic reporter Stephen Glass, who between 1995-1998 repeatedly fabricated quotes, and in some case whole stories, until his lies were eventually unwound by a rival publication.

Now every journalist, no matter how good, knows the horrible stomach-turning feeling that you have when it turns out an important fact in a story is wrong.

Normally this will be due to an error beginning with one of your sources - there is always a certain amount of trust you have to place in people like councillors or the police, but even such lofty bodies will make the occassional boob.

However, in Glass's case the errors were entirely his own fabrication, so, unsettling as it felt to watch his stories unwind, I had little sympathy for the young chancer.

The real horror was in watching his editor realise the real magnitude of Glass's journalistic crimes.

Editors must place an incredible amount of trust in their reporters - if someone decides to sue a paper it is the editor who is directly in the firing line.

Much as certain facts such as road names or dates can often be checked independently, the accuracy of crucial points such as descriptions or quotes has to be trusted entirely to the reporter.

I should quickly point out this is not a problem here in Harrow (all our reporters have the ability to make their eyes swirl while they hypnotically hiss "Trussst in me"), but just watching a depiction of an editor coming to the realisation that he had a rogue reporter on his hands was enough to send shivers down my spine.

I have written on the subject of accuracy before, but I don't think I can emphasize enough the importance of it, and just plain fabricating stories in unforgivable in the world of reporting.

Admittedly there is a certain pressure to find the big scoops and the articles which will draw the public's attention, but making them up negates the whole idea of news and turns any newspaper into a potential work of fiction.

Readers must also form a bond of trust with journalists and a publication, and they have every right to believe that what they read is truthful, whatever their opinion on the matter.

Nothing is more damaging in any relationship than finding out you've been lied to by someone you have trusted and in the case of a paper and its readers this relationship can be near impossible to rebuild.

So there it is, an insight into the journalist's second-worst nightmare, falling just behind attempting to run through a swamp filled with caramel while being chased by a 50ft chief executive in a mini-skirt who is set on draining your blood to serve to shareholders at their annual meeting.

Lucky it's all just a dream eh?