Jake Tapper and the media’s crisis of competence

That was the question a high school student asked journalist Ryan Lizza several years ago in a class I was teaching at Georgetown University. Lizza had been a writer in the 1990s at The New Republic at the same time as Stephen Glass.

Glass had written several fraudulent and fictitious articles for the New Republic. Glass had been found out but only after dozens of made-up articles had made it into print. A 2004 film, Shattered Glass, had been made about the scandal.

So how did the editors not see the fraud Glass was perpetrating? My journalism class — again, made up of high schoolers — were amazed Glass got away with what he did, and for so long. When I asked Lizza to

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