{"id":7765,"date":"2019-02-07T09:08:32","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T14:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7765"},"modified":"2019-03-14T08:49:50","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T12:49:50","slug":"hollywood-investigates-journalism-2019-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7765","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood Investigates Journalism: 2019 Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

While a bright line has traditionally separated news and\nentertainment media, that line is getting a little blurred around the edges. In\na presentation this week at the Princeton Public Library, entertaining film\nhistorian Max Alvarez<\/a> showed clips\nof real newscasters playing their professional selves in television dramas and\nfictional newscasters appearing on real news shows. You have to wonder whether\nthis is a good idea when the media are under a constant \u201cfake news\u201d assault. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the early days of Hollywood, the industry has wanted\nits products lauded and its stars burnished and its scandals muffled. It loves\nnews coverage that manages that. Likewise, the print media likes movies that\nportray journalists in a positive light, and it has withheld coverage of movies\nthat didn\u2019t, letting them sink into obscurity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fictional news outlets, reporters, and issues are one thing, but what happens when Hollywood tackles reality? Since the 1970\u2019s, stories about real journalists at real newspapers have had extra punch because they were rooted in real events. Top of mind: The Washington Post <\/em> and Watergate in All the President\u2019s Men <\/em>(1976), <\/em>and The Boston Globe<\/em> and child-abusing priests in Spotlight <\/em>(2015), two films similar in making the tedium of reporting\u2014the phone calls, the notes, the record checks\u2014dramatic and compelling, Alvarez noted. In them, the journalist is romanticized as a seeker of truth, despite the political pressures of corporate owners, advertisers, and the legal department. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Those pressures are front and center in the biopic, The Post <\/em>(2017), which focused on a pivotal\ndecision by Washington Post<\/em> publisher\nKatherine Graham. The 2005 biopic Good\nNight, and Good Luck<\/em>. portrays the conflict between veteran broadcast journalist\nEdward R. Murrow and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s. In both\nfilms, the journalist is the hero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A film about a real-life journalist that did not<\/em> put the news media in a good light\nwas the aptly titled Kill the Messenger<\/em>\n(2014), which perhaps you\u2019ve never heard of (trailer<\/a>).\nIn 1996, Gary Webb, a reporter for the San\nJose Mercury News,<\/em> developed a series about links between the CIA, the Nicaraguan\nContras and the crack cocaine flooding the United States. The big papers, perhaps\nincensed at being scooped, attacked his reporting, then him. His paper withdrew\nits support. Fed up, Webb quit and wrote the book Dark Alliance<\/em>. (Note that subsequent revelations have vindicated many\nof his claims.) Television news people aren\u2019t all heroes either. The Insider<\/em> (1999) detailed how CBS agonized\nabout whether to air a 60 Minutes<\/em> segment\nwith tobacco-industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the editorial decisions in these films\u2014whether to\nattack Joe McCarthy or the tobacco industry or whether to publish the Pentagon\nPapers or continue investigating Watergate or claims of priests\u2019 sexual abuse\nof children\u2014may seem obvious in retrospect, these films do a service by showing\nhow difficult they really were. You can imagine similar soul-searching under\nway in newsrooms around the country today faced with the pressures of imperfect\ninformation and relentless attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While a bright line has traditionally separated news and entertainment media, that line is getting a little blurred around the edges. In a presentation this week at the Princeton Public Library, entertaining film historian Max Alvarez showed clips of real … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Hollywood Investigates Journalism: 2019 Edition ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[366,266,261,57,67,104],"tags":[1506,1507,1222],"class_list":["post-7765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drama","category-history","category-journalism","category-movies","category-television","category-the-morgue","tag-all-the-presidents-men","tag-spotlight","tag-the-post"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/All-the-Presidents-Men.jpg?fit=369%2C136&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-21f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7767,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7765\/revisions\/7767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}