Jonathan V. Last, online editor

"SHATTERED GLASS" is a slim, reedy film. It presents the now-familiar story of Stephen Glass as a cautionary tale and then offers up a hero in the person of Chuck Lane, the New Republic editor who fired Glass. As a journalism movie, "Shattered Glass" is middle-rank, not up to the standards of "The Insider" or "Live from Baghdad," but better than, say, "I Love Trouble." It is too parochial to find a broad audience and too slight to win any major awards.

And yet, it is an important movie to discuss because it attempts to pull an ugly trick: While "Shattered Glass" presents itself as an exposé of journalism's sins, it is actually a carefully prepared whitewash.

THE STEPHEN GLASS of "Shattered Glass" is an effete, unstable sycophant. Played with surprising dexterity by Hayden Christensen (one suspects that in hell actors are forced to work with George Lucas over and over), Glass walks, shoeless, around the office ladling out compliments, asking people if they are "mad" at him, and playing all sides. He pledges complete allegiance to New Republic editor Michael Kelly (played by Hank Azaria) and makes an enormous show of anger when Kelly is fired. He's then the first person through the door to suck up to Kelly's replacement, Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard).

He also displays a clear understanding of professional rank. The character Glass is obsequious towards his superiors, self-effacing with his peers, and condescending and puffed up around his juniors. He embodies every loathsome quality of the Washington career climber and for this is rewarded with respect from his colleagues and prestigious assignments from bigger, richer magazines.

He is also depicted as a mad genius. Glass dazzles the staff at his magazine with improbable story ideas--among them a young Republican orgy, a cult devoted to Alan Greenspan, and finally, a computer hacker named Ian Restil, who extorts thousands of dollars from a software behemoth called Jukt Micronics.

The Jukt story attracts the attention of Adam Penenberg (Steve Zahn), a reporter for Forbes Digital Tool, who begins hunting for Jukt and Restil. Penenberg first believes that Glass has been snookered by a group of prankster hackers, but then comes to realize that the Jukt story is deliberate fiction. With a big assist from Forbes, Lane finally confronts Glass and decides to fire him, over the strenuous objections of Glass's colleague and close friend, Caitlin Avey (Chloë Sevigny). The film's closing moments show Glass having a full-blown breakdown and Lane being received as a conquering hero by Avey and the rest of the New Republic staff.

OF COURSE, there is no "Caitlin Avey." Those who have followed the Glass saga will see in Avey an amalgam of Glass's former friends Hanna Rosin and Jonathan Chait. But "Shattered Glass" fictionalizes nearly every character outside of Glass, Penenberg, Kelly, and Lane (with the notable exception of Marty Peretz, who is mostly an off-screen presence) and it is here that the movie makes its first wrong turn. There was a strange dynamic at work in the offices of the New Republic--Rosin admits that after she heard Glass had been fired she "marched into Chuck's office and all but called him an asshole . . ." She must not have been the only person on staff to have had an opinion. What were the outspoken and forthright Leon Wieseltier's feelings on the subject? How about serial plagiarist Ruth Shalit, who was still at the magazine? But instead of telling us exactly who said what, "Shattered Glass" offers only fictionalized supporting characters.