Journalism in American Films: The Good Fight, Part 1
Many of us love movies that celebrate the good fight as offered by the fourth estate.
By Alan Herrmann
MOVIE CRITIC
There are plenty of American films that reveal the importance of journalism to the public. Some classics come to mind like Citizen Kane, My Girl Friday, and Ace in the Hole which, although fictional, were realistic stories. Most of us are familiar with the films All the President’s Men, Zodiac, and Good Night, and Good Luck. These films are based in fact and captured the hearts and minds of American viewers.
Many of us love movies that celebrate the good fight as offered by the fourth estate. There are two relatively recent films that I believe honor excellent journalism and the hard work it takes to follow a story: Spotlight (2015) and The Post (2017).
Spotlight is a true story focused on a team of journalists at The Boston Globe – known as Spotlight – who investigate the scandal at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston involving priests who molested children for years and were never held accountable. The church kept a tight lid on the outrage and dealt with the problem by simply transferring priests suspected of molestation to other dioceses. The Spotlight findings would not just expose the cover-up in Boston’s diocese but others throughout the United States and the world. The Boston Globe won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2003.
What makes this film great is its frankness. It points out that as good as these journalists are, there are no big heroes, no sensationalist scenes of immediate success. It’s still a thriller, just as All the President’s Men was forty years earlier, with reporters hitting the pavement, working leads from interviews on the phone and in person. This is true drama, not manufactured for effect. In other words, it shows us how it’s really done.
The cast brings their A-game and shares screentime as an ensemble cast, which sets it apart from films like All the President’s Men, with two leads doing most of the heavy lifting. In Spotlight, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, and Stanley Tucci share the workload --if not equally, close enough.
After the movie’s release, it was praised by the film community and audiences nationwide. It was even admired for its honesty by individuals within the Vatican. The movie was honored with several nominations and awards, including Oscars for best motion picture and best screenplay. Just as the original Boston Globe articles did for justice in the early 2000’s, the movie helped keep the investigation alive. As a result, thousands of victims around the world have found justice.
Steven Spielberg made the film The Post in 2017, his contribution to journalism and what was once a great newspaper, The Washington Post. The movie takes place in 1971 as the newspaper, under the leadership of publisher Katharine “Kay” Graham and editor Ben Bradlee, struggles to compete with papers like The New York Times and The Boston Globe. A group of classified documents concerning U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, known as the Pentagon Papers, is about to be published by The New York Times. The Times team is waiting for a court injunction to be lifted to move ahead. Meanwhile, Bradlee and Graham feel their paper should be tackling this powerful story. They knew if they could print the documents, they would no longer be just a large city paper, but an important national and international one as well. What starts out as a journalistic competition to get the story out first becomes a fight for freedom of the press. Both the Times and the Post were heralded for their courage.
Spielberg tells another significant story, too: the mountain climbing Kay Graham does as the first female publisher of a major newspaper. Here Meryl Streep gives an outstanding performance as Graham. She manages to bring to life Graham’s slightly affected cadence, polite society mannerisms, and nervousness as she struggles with insecurities within a male-dominated world. The scenes showing her working relationship with editor and confidant Ben Bradlee as they try to keep the paper alive feel very credible.
Tom Hanks is also at the top of his game as Ben Bradlee, even down to the editor’s gravelly voice, rolled up striped dress shirt, and loosened tie. Hanks had big shoes to fill after Jason Robard’s iconic take on Bradlee in All the President’s Men. As good as Robard’s performance was, Hanks captured Bradlee more accurately with a balanced approach. Hanks’ Bradlee isn’t as volatile and crusty as Robards take on the legendary editor.
A free press has long been a cornerstone of our democracy. These films remind us of that fact and how strongly it reverberates today. There was a time when even wealthy newspaper publishers understood the importance of a free press, including editorials and political endorsements they personally might not agree with but publish anyway. Ironically, certain billionaires today use their influence to omit political editorials that show them in an unflattering light. These movies should be watched in journalism and social studies classes to help students understand the fragility of an unfiltered and free press.
Next week, I’ll be discussing the films The Insider and Shattered Glass, two more fact-based films about journalism. We’ll look at how a respected political magazine and one of the most popular television news programs come under intense scrutiny.
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