Journalists on the verge of a
nervous breakdown
Portrayals of journalists in novels and
films 1980s to 2000
Key Texts
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Primary:
Ian McEwan, Amsterdam, 1998
Iain Banks, Complicity, 1993
James Meek, We Are Now beginning our Descent, 2008
David Puttnam (dir) Defence of the Realm 1984
Secondary:
Richard Shannon, A Press Free and Responsible, 2001
Raymond Snoddy, The Good, the Bad and the
Unacceptable, 1992
Summary of British Portrayals so far
• We’ve seen a steady change in the fictional portrayal of journalists since
the early C20
• Early years are characterised by the ‘heroic’ reporter bringing the news to
the newly literate masses, saving the world, and individuals from harm
• Interwar years are characterised by portrayals mainly penned by nonjournalists, alarmed by the rise in the power of the press and asking
questions about the role of journalism, particularly in warning and
bringing the truth to the public as another war becomes inevitable
• Post war years characterised by widespread post-war anxiety and
alienation; characters are professionals yet their personal lives are
dominated by insecurities and self doubt
• Another big change in the portrayal of reporters and editors now occurs at
the end of the C20/early C21 as new questions arise as to the role of
journalism in society
Context
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The 1980s and 1990s are characterised by increasingly extreme behaviour and
sensationalism of the tabloid press
Gave rise to then culture secretary David Mellor’s comment that the popular press
was ‘drinking in the last chance saloon.’
‘Such was the disgrace into which popular mass journalism had sunk, dragging the
industry as a whole down with it…After June 1992 the question would be whether
self-regulation would best, in the public interest, be abolished and replaced by
legislation setting up some statutory regulation of the press with a view to
compelling it to be accurate, unintrusive, decent, fair-minded and generally alive
to its obligations and responsibilities to foster social and political advancement.
(Shannon, p.2)
Shannon suggests that the reason why the British tabloid press is so excessively
intrusive and sensationalist is precisely because unlike the US and virtually every
other Western country (apart from Australia which took its lead from UK)
protection of the press, as enshrined, for example in the First Amendment, ‘is
reciprocated by some degree of acceptance on the part of the press of a
corresponding obligation of acknowledgement.’
Snoddy’s criticism
• ‘Three characteristics seem to mark the
behaviour of British newspapers: an almost
pathological reluctance to admit errors and say
sorry, a deep sensitivity to criticism and a marked
distaste for thinking about what they do…The
degree of complacency and defensiveness
involved is a small symptom of a much greater
malaise – the lack of self criticism in the
newspaper industry…’ (Good, Bad etc, p 168-88)
• That’s what has lead to Leveson
Calcutt Committee
• The Calcutt Committee on Privacy and Related Matters was
established in 1989 following a series of tabloid outrages against
politicians and the Royal Family; cheque book journalism, kiss and
tells, invasions of privacy were commonplace
• There were major fears in the newspaper world that the Committee
would recommend abolishing the Press Council, established in 1953
after the first Royal Commission, and propose statutory regulation
rather like the Broadcasting Complaints Commission.
• A popular television actor Gordon Kaye, badly injured in a freak
accident, lay desperately ill in Charing Cross Hospital. A reporter
and photographer from the Sunday Sport contrived access…The
Sunday Sport editor thought this a ‘great old fashioned scoop’…this
was held to be a scandal too far. The Committee naturally took note
of what instantly became a landmark in atrocious intrusiveness.’
(Shannon, p.26)
Consequences for portrayals
• Although previous portrayals have characterised some
journalists as morally weak, indecisive, cruel, full of self
doubt, they never expressed doubt going about their
profession. Thomas Fowler, though betraying a ‘friend’
and his wife was a thoroughly professional journalist;
John Dyson, though vain and self regarding
nevertheless completed his duties well. Poppy, though
wondering who read the Downingham Post, doggedly
covered road accidents and court stories.
• Late C20 portrayals of press reporters and editors
however reveal a crisis both personally and
professionally for the journalist characters, reflected
the crisis of faith in journalism in society.
Defence of the Realm
• Even Defence of the Realm, a 1984 film which
casts the state and proprietor as the ultimate
‘baddy’ the hero, a journalist, engages in some
pretty underhand tactics (film). Certainly the
newspaper as a business is seen as corrupt,
hubristic and a million miles from Fourth
Estate idealism – despite, still the existence of
reporters who want to get at the truth.
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Iain Banks Complicity
• Part thriller, part study of a man pushed to the brink
with drugs, stress and his own healthy dose of self
destruction (hand out – what does this introduction
tell you about our character?)
• The novel is about the effect covering something as
traumatic as the Gulf War has on a journalist. Colley’s
inability to cover the most important story he was
presented with explains why he behaves so selfdestructively in the novel. (Basra Road handout, p290292): ‘the time of my failure and my simple, shaming
incapacity to reap and work the obvious power of what
I was observing; the place that exposed my
incompetence, my hopeless inability to witness.’
Basra Road
Basra Road close up
Redeeming Feature
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His redeeming feature is his ability to examine his motives and criticise himself:
introspection and self awareness: he knows he’s a shit
“I feel like Judas, but there’s a way out; not with any honour, perhaps, but I’ve
looked at myself pretty closely over the last few days and I’ve had to admit to
myself that I’m not quite as wonderful a guy as I liked to think I was.”
He also, was idealistic once, and thought that being a journalist would help him
make the world a better place. His inability to communicate his disgust for man’s
inhumanity is what makes him turn to self-destruction and drug-taking
‘I’ve imagined myself in situations like this, made up speeches in my head,
speeches about truth and freedom and protection of sources, speeches I imagined
delivery from the witness box just before the judge sentenced me to ninety days or
six months or whatever for contempt of court, but I was kidding myself. Even if it’s
true that I would have gone to prison to protect somebody else or make some
dubious point about the freedom of the press, I know I’d only have been doing it to
make myself look good. I’m just like everybody else: selfish.’
Vernon Halliday in Amsterdam
• Vernon Halliday had no such ability: to that extent he was
already dead when the novel began, not just at the ending.
• Brief plot: A formerly glamorous and artistic good time girl,
Molly Lane has died of cancer. At her funeral, three of her
former lovers experience sorrow, loss and intense jealousy
of each other. They are:
• Clive Linley, Britain’s foremost modern composer
• Vernon Halliday, editor of The Judge, a quality broadsheet
with a struggling circulation
• Julian Garmony the current Foreign Secretary
• Also at the funeral is Molly’s long suffering husband George
Lane, a wealthy publisher
• Following the funeral the three men vie with
each other, make pacts, betray each other and
make disastrous moral decisions
• At the end of the novel, Vernon and Clive end
up dead and Julian, tipped to be the next PM,
loses his job in a cabinet reshuffle.
What does Amsterdam say about
Journalism
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(read handouts)
Vernon, the newspaper editor is morally bankrupt; the business has erased all
normal decent instincts
He himself acknowledges that he is an empty shell: The thought recurred to
Vernon Halliday, during an uncharacteristic lull in his morning, that he might not
exist... When he was alone, he was nothing at all’ – that’s the closest he get’s to
self awareness
The newspaper world McEwan creates has shades of Scoop: 'It's time we ran more
regular columns. They're cheap, and everyone else is doing them. You know, we
hire someone of low to medium intelligence, possibly female, to write about, well,
nothing much. You've seen the sort of thing. Goes to a party and can't remember
someone's name. Twelve hundred words.‘
Most of the other journalist characters in the novel are caricatures – the bitter
foreign editor passed over for promotion, the dizzy female features editor, the old
guard ‘grammarians’ on the subs desk desperately holding the line for decency
McEwan is saying that the newspaper world is one where you rise to the top if you
have no moral values. His choice of broadsheet paper is telling – the rot in the
news industry is not just confined to the tabloids.
What has journalism done to him?
• His chair was empty; he was finely dissolved throughout
the building, from the City Desk on the sixth floor where he
was about to intervene to prevent the sacking of a longserving sub who could not spell, to the basement where
parking allocation had brought the senior staff to open
war…Vernon’s chair was empty because he was in
Jerusalem, the House of Commons, Cape Town and Manila,
globally disseminated like dust…he was widely known as a
man without edges, without faults or virtues, a man who
did not fully exist…perhaps he had already died’ (pp29/32)
(How does this description compare to those of Ommaney,
Bellamy and Ferrol in the Edwardian novels; the editor in
the more recent Spike, however, does suffer the same
malaise. (handout)
Does journalism damage your mental
health?
• Is the incessant search for stories debilitating?
• Is it the pressure to survive in a competitive
commercial world too much for some to take?
• Is the strain of being the ‘outsider’ or
‘observer’ too much to take?
• Think about all the fictions we have looked at
over the term. When did journalism move
from corrupting society to corrupting the
individual who practises it?
Key to Vernon’s promotion
• Vernon is hired to replace the ‘titans’ who
went before him, the ‘gifted editors’ of the
past, to take the ailing Judge downmarket.
• He is not so much a great editor as a puppet
of the modern information industry
• Taking a great paper downhill with a story
about Siamese twins biting each other’s face
The novel is about the hypocrisy and
cynicism at the heart of modern media
• ‘In a week sales were up by a hundred thousand, and
the editor was finding he was arguing into silence from
his senior editors rather than protest; secretly they all
wanted him to go ahead as long as their principled
dissent was minuted. Vernon was winning the
argument because everyone, lowly journalists
included, now saw they could have it both ways – their
paper saved, their consciences unstained.’ (p100)
• He felt large and benign, a little ruthless perhaps but
ultimately good, capable of standing alone (p101)
• He no longer feels dead and empty – the story makes
him feel alive
We Are Now Beginning Our Descent,
2008 (One of the first novels to discuss
journalism at length post 9-11)
• James Meek was a reporter on the Guardian,
before becoming a published novelist.
• We are now beginning is very much semi
autobiographical, about a journalist who wants to
be a novelist, reluctantly accepting an assignment
from his paper to cover the war in Afghanistan
• Based on Meek’s own war reporting experiences,
it portrays a journalist falling apart both
spiritually and emotionally, scarred by what he
has seen in the war zone
• Losing all sense of perspective, he abandons his job and family to
chase after a girl, Astrid, a features writer he has met in
Afghanistan, in the false belief that she will provide him the
answers he is looking for. But the affair only makes matters worse.
• It’s another novel about humans trying to make sense of the
madness around them with the ultimate conclusion that all you can
do is care for the people you love and keep them safe (he returns to
his family in the end)
• In the novel the world of the foreign correspondent with its
alienation, mad rushes of adrenalin and selfishness is a metaphor
for everything that is wrong with modern life.
• But, the novel concludes that it is better to have seen the madness
of life and make a conscious decision to return to domesticity than
never to have known what it was like. Better to have your senses
flayed a little.
Damaging profession
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The novel is also about how damaging the profession of foreign correspondent can
be to the individual.
(handout)
American reporter Mark – has lost his hand, we presume while covering the
Afghan war: ‘Mark had to work twelve hours of his Afghan day and he had to work
twelve hours of his Californian day, the whole twenty four, no overlap. Kellas never
saw him sleep.’ (p7)
Paints a depressing picture of the foreign press pack (compare Scoop’s magnificent
anarchy, to the squabbles over borrowing batteries and drinking each others’ milk)
Unlike Cameron Colley, who begs his editors to send him to Iraq, Kellas at first
refuses to go to Afghanistan…eventually does because ‘he wasn’t brave enough to
be thought a coward’ (p13)
Dinner party description (pp57-58) portrays him as arrogant, self-important and a
nasty person – he behaves like a shit – but is it because he is travelling abroad the
next day and he has loosened his grip already on conventional human relations?