17 years later, Harper's retracts story from a serial liar

By Becket Adams, Becket Adams

Published December 20, 2015

When it was revealed in 1998 that the New Republic's Stephen Glass was a serial liar, several media outlets scrambled to see if they had been taken in by his fabulism.

Many newsrooms discovered that they had, in fact, published outright falsehoods, and it wasn't long before editors issued retractions and corrections, apologizing to their dumbfounded audiences for Glass' numerous deceptions.

But the fallout from Glass' many fabrications has been so great, that some are still apologizing nearly 20 years later.

Harper's magazine is the latest example. For the first time in its 165-year-history, the magazine issued a retraction this week for a 1998 article, titled "Prophets and Losses," wherein Glass recounted his supposed time as a telephone psychic for a fortune-telling hotline.