American portrayals of
journalists
Fiction, cartoon and film
Early fictional representations
• There was a large outpouring of ‘newspaper
fiction’ in America, 1890 – 1930
• 78 novels and short stories with journalist as
central character written 1890 – 1930 in US
• Mainly produced by practising or former
journalists who longed for a better, calmer life as
a novelist
• ‘A reporter is no hero for a novel,’ Stephen Crane
scrawled in exasperation on a postcard as he
struggled to complete Active Service (1899)
Similar ideas to Gibbs et al: reporters
are heroes but the machine chews you
up
• From Dawn O’Hara (p.47): ‘After you have been a
newspaper writer for seven years – and loved it –
you will be a newspaper writer, at heart and by
instinct at least, until you die. There’s no getting
away from it. It’s in the blood. Newspaper men
have been known to inherit fortunes, write books
and become famous, to degenerate into press
agents and become infamous, to blossom into
personages, to sink into nonentities, but the news
nose remained a part of them, the inky, smoky,
stuffy smell of a newspaper was ever sweet in
their nostrils.’
The newsroom may be killing you, but
it’s irresistible too
• Stephen French Whitman, Predestined, Scribner’s
1910: ‘He smelled dust, steam, hot metal. A persistent
heavy rumbling seemed to make the whole building
tremble….To the left, some, with armfuls of metal
spools, were walking between lines of small, racketing
machines. To the right, others, wearing eye-shades,
were standing before type-cases. Ahead, some distance
off, among a huddle of desks, in a fog of tobacco
smoke, reporters in their shirt sleeves were writing,
calling out to one another, waving above their heads
large sheets of paper, which boys snatched from their
hands and scurried off with.’ (pp.53-54)
Acquainted with the night: the image
of Journalists in American Fiction 1890
–
1930
by
Howard
Good
• ‘The emergence of newspaper fiction in the 1890s as a distinct genre
followed the emergence of the reporter as a distinct type. ‘Social changes,’
literary critic George Santayana once said, ‘do not reach artistic expression
until after their momentum is acquired and other collateral effects are
fully predetermined (Justification of Art, Little Essays, Scribners 1920)’
• ‘Between 1870 and 1890, the total circulation of daily newspapers in the
United States rose 222 per cent, while the total population of the country
rose only 63 per cent.’
• Tries to explain the largely negative portrayals of journalists in this period:
‘To become the target of violent criticism, it was first necessary for
journalists to achieve a degree of influence…Important segments of the
public refused to acknowledge that there was anything prestigious about
journalism. It was treated by the ‘better people’ with bitter scorn. Behind
the bravura of reporters who proclaimed themselves citizens of no mean
state seethed self-doubt, self doubt that would echo and re-echo through
the pages of newspaper fiction.’
Journalists in cartoons
Journalists as Superheroes
• Both Superman and Spiderman, as their human selves,
work in newspaper offices:
• Superman as Clark Kent in the Daily Planet and
Spiderman as Peter Parker, freelance photo-journalist
working for the Daily Bugle
• Other characters inhabit the stories: Lois Lane, the star
reporter on the Daily Planet, and Superman’s
girlfriend.
• In Superman, while Peter Parker embodies the virtues
of a good journalist, first with the news, but never
forgetting the public. His editor, J Jonah Jameson is the
opposite: ruthless, immoral, the classic tabloid hack.
Origins of Superman
• Original comic book hero created by Jerome
‘Jerry’ Siegel and Joseph ‘Joe’ Schuster,
published in Action Comics, June 1938.
• They had been experimenting with storylines
from as early as 1934, in the midst of the
American Depression. Superman was
supposed to offer Americans hope that in all
the grim financial news, someone out there
was looking out for them.
Why set these cartoons in newspaper
offices?
•
•
•
Working as a reporter for a major newspaper enables Clark Kent to investigate
criminals without their suspecting that he's really Superman and provides him with
the best opportunity for being free to help people as Superman without having to
explain his frequent absences from his place of employment. "As a reporter,"
notes Kent in December, 1949, "I have a hundred underworld and police contacts
that make it easier for Superman to fight crime!"
Over and above his usefulness to him in his career as Superman, it is clear that
Clark Kent values his career in journalism purely for its own sake. "Just remember,"
he exclaims in 1945, "a good reporter gets the news - and gets it first! But there's
more to being a reporter than that!He lives by the deadline! The thunder of the
presses is the pounding of his heart! And most important - all his personal feelings
remain in the background! It's his story that counts! Always remember that!"
But don’t forget: it was a canny move on the part of Siegel and Schuster to set a
comic strip hero in a newspaper office – they earned millions from syndicating
their strips to American papers keen to be associated with the Daily Planet.
Why, in 1930s America was the idea of
a superhero journalist accepted by the
public?
• The recognition of the role the press plays in
safeguarding the people in a democratic society is
embedded in US Constitution:
• Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances.
— The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Bill of Rights
• The Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments to the
Constitution — went into effect on December 15, 1791,
when the state of Virginia ratified it, giving the bill the
majority of ratifying states required to protect citizens from
the power of the federal government.
• The early Americans, having been controlled unfairly by the
British for centuries, were determined that a free press
should form the basis of their new just society:
• “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a
government without newspapers, or newspapers without a
government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the
latter.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Jan. 16, 1787
The ‘Freeman’s Journals’ roles in early
independent US society
• Newspaper accounts helped to frame the debate for the public over
whether the press was entitled to a written guarantee of freedom. In
Philadelphia, the Freeman’s Journal published the following opinion:
• “As long as the liberty of the press continues unviolated, and the people
have the right of expressing and publishing their sentiments upon every
public measure, it is next to impossible to enslave a free nation. Men of an
aspiring and tyrannical disposition, sensible of this truth, have ever been
inimical to the press, and have considered the shackling of it, as the first
step towards the accomplishment of their hateful domination, and the
entire suppression of all liberty of public discussion, as necessary to its
support.”
• There have been many cases where the US Government has tried to
restrain papers from publishing leaks from other Government
Departments. In each case the US Supreme Court has upheld the
newspaper’s right to publish by citing the First Amendment.
In America, journalism is seen more as
a civic duty than in UK
• ‘The Americans are stuffier and more cautious. But
they are also more careful and take the idea of
journalism as a civic duty much more seriously. Much
as it pains me to say this, I fear the Americans are
closer to being right than the British…American
journalists, I realized, regard themselves as members of
a respectable profession – like lawyers or bankers.
Their British counterparts generally prefer the idea that
they are outsiders.’ Gideon Rachman, chief foreign
affairs writer for the Financial Times
• This analysis goes to the heart of the way journalists
are viewed by US and British society
Balance
• Studies of American journalism as opposed to
British journalism is that American journalists
appear to strive for balance more than their
British counterparts. Although this results
often in fairer coverage of news, it can also
lead to a blander style of news reporting
Balance
• ‘From virtually their first day in the classroom and
on the job, the nation’s best journalists have had
instilled in them several bedrock principles of
sound and responsible news writing: an
uncompromising personal detachment from the
subject they are writing on so they can ensure
their objectivity; a fidelity to accuracy and
fairness; and an abiding commitment to ensuring
that audiences have access to a ‘balance’ of
competing judgements and opinions to serve as
the basis of their decision-making about the
important issues of the day’ (Ward, 2008)
1978 Superman film
• In the opening of the 1978 Superman film, the
Daily Planet is given almost mythical status:
• ‘In the decade of the 1930s, even the great city of
Metropolis was not spared the ravages of the
worldwide Depression. In the times of fear and
confusion the job of informing the public was the
responsibility of the Daily Planet. A great
metropolitan newspaper, whose reputation for
clarity and truth had become a symbol of hope
for the city of Metropolis.’
• You couldn’t have that in Britain without irony
• Clark Kent is the Daily Planet's star reporter. Renowned for his
ability to root out local news, particularly stories dealing with crime
and corruption, he has performed in numerous other capacities for
the Daily Planet, including that of war correspondent, lovelorn
editor, editor of the Daily Planet's Bombay edition, and editor of the
entire newspaper in the absence of editor Perry White.
• In pursuit of a news story, Clark Kent has worked as a private
detective, a fireman, and a policeman; he has joined the Marines;
and he has become a skid row bum. He has been a police
commissioner, a department store clerk, a sheriff, a vacuum cleaner
salesman, and a disc jockey. He has even gone to prison voluntarily
in order to investigate a series of prison riots and to learn where a
hardened convict hid his $1,000,000 in stolen loot.
• To the readers of the Daily Planet, the name of Clark Kent signed
over a story means integrity and honesty. His newspaper reporting
on crime has won him countless awards.
(He’s just quit the Daily Planet though)
• “Growing up in Smallville, I believed that
journalism was an ideal, as worthy and important
as being a cop, a fireman — a teacher or a doctor.
I was taught to believe you could use words to
change the course of rivers — that even the
darkest secrets would fall under the harsh light of
the sun. But facts have been replaced by
opinions. Information has been replaced by
entertainment. Reporters have become
stenographers.”
Verdict of one Superman fan on the
blogger for the site ‘Clarkcatropolis’:
• ‘If the New 52’s Superman book has convinced
me of anything, it’s that the man of steel is a
whole lot more interesting when he’s living
the life of a struggling blogger than when he's
saving the world.’
Lois Lane
An impeccable CV
• Lois Lane is “the Daily Planet’s star woman reporter” ( 1950),
ranking alongside Clark Kent in the Daily Planet’s reportorial
hierarchy. Described as the newspaper’s “sob sister” ( Nov Dec
1940; and others) and as its lovelorn columnist ( Jan 1942; and
others) in many early texts, Lois Lane has risen through the
journalistic ranks to become one of the Daily Planet’s “star
reporters” ( Mar/Apr 1941) and, with Clark Kent one of the
newspaper’s “two brightest satellites” (Jan/Feb 1944).
• Particularly adept at covering local news she has performed the full
range of journalistic duties, including stints as war correspondent;
weather editor, described as “one of the lowliest jobs on any
newspaper”, question and answer editor and head of the lost and
found department; editor of the Daily Planet’s Paris edition (Apr’55)
and “acting editor” in the absence of editor Perry White (Sep 1958)
Based on the wise-cracking Torchy
Blane
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm8aMTD
Me1w
The Daily Bugle in Spiderman
Like the Planet, its offices dominate
the cityscape
The Daily Bugle
• The Daily Bugle is not just featured in the
Spiderman Comics (since 1963) but in other
Marvel Comics creations.
• The offices have been blown up twice, once by
the Graviton and second by the Green Goblin
• Over the years dozens of reporters,
columnists, interns and editors from the Daily
Bugle have all had bit-parts in various Marvel
Comics stories
Why is a journalist such a good alter
ego for a superhero?
•
•
•
•
•
Captain Marvel’s alter ego is radio journalist Billy Batson
comic books seem to have embraced the image of the tough yet honest reporter
after the story and the baddies more than any other genre.
Catwoman writer Will Pfeifer, a working reporter at the Rockford Register Star has
said, “A reporter is tough to top as a secret identity – not exactly blue collar, but
hardworking
nonetheless, down there in the trenches, trying to get the story. The access to
breaking news … the newsroom has always been a fun environment to set stories,
full of colourful characters and fast-paced dialogue. Though, I admit, as someone
who’s spent most of the last 20 years in a newsroom, I never thought the
Superman stories ever really captured the oddball spirit of the place.”
(From Bill Knight, Comic Book Journalists Beyond Clark Kent, published in IJPC)
Jane Arden
• Jane Arden was the star of her own long-running comic
strip for over forty years, a record that not many other
strips can say. Starting all the way back in the late 1920s,
Arden was quite a groundbreaking series for her day. She
sought to expose criminals, and by infiltrating and going
undercover into their world, a very mould-breaking move
for many in that era, especially for a female character.
• The character would become a template for future female
fictional reporters. Many may look to Lois Lane and Brenda
Starr as the true archetypes of the hard as nails girl
reporter, but Jane Arden came before them all, even
spawning radio programs and a film. Many characters owe
a debt to her, and not just for her bravery, but for the way
she conducted business in those early comics.
Jane Arden – Crime Reporter
More recent comic book journalisthero Matty Roth in DMZ, 2007
‘For the first time ever I really thought
I owned that title’
• Again – without irony, portrays journalism as a
tough heroic profession with a reputation to
live up to.
Why do journalists make such good
comic book heroes?
• 1) The comic book, in its very short passages of dialogue
and reliance on quickstep action does not allow for the kind
of restless self doubt that many fictional journalists have.
They therefore have to be easily recognisable as good or
easily recognisable as bad.
• 2) There is a strong idea in American society (stronger than
in the UK) that individual reporters are generally decent,
honest people trying to do a difficult job, and if they are
thwarted it is because of their editors or proprietors who
are too close to power.
• 3) In this black and white world then, it is easier to present
reporters as good and their editors as bad (or good too, as
in Superman).
Journalists in US Films
A long and fascinated relationship
between Hollywood and the reporter
• Brian McNair, in his book Journalists in Film (Edinburgh
University Press, 2010) reckons that while around 80
films whose major character is a reporter have been
made by British studios, some 2,166 have been made
by Hollywood (p.23)
• The first Charlie Chaplin short, made in 1914, features
Chaplin as rogue Edgar English, who applied for a job
as a reporter (from 3 mins 30)
• http://www.archive.org/details/CC_1914_02_02_Maki
ngALiving
• The latest, the US version of House of Cards starring
Kevin Spacey, came out in 2013
The Glory Days of the Black and White
films of the 1940s
• His Girl Friday, dir Howard Hawks (1940)
• The Philadelphia Story, dir George Cukor (1940)
Citizen Kane, dir Orson Welles (1941)
Woman of the Year, dir George Stevens (1942)
All four films are multi-Oscar winning and award
winning and always make it into the top 100
American films. Citizen Kane is held by film buffs
to be the best film of all time.
His Girl Friday
• Based on a 1928 Broadway Play, The Front Page
• The film changes the main character’s gender from
male to female and adds the sexual frisson between
Hildy Johnson and her ex-husband Walter Burns.
• Uses the idea of the journalist-as-loveable rogue
(Hildy) contrasted with the more aggressive, cynical
and hard-nosed editor (Walter)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEnZ-zu1YXA
• You can see the whole film here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rdSZUlzIQw&feat
ure=related
• (It’s also in the library)
Dialogue
• The most praised aspect of the film is the wise-cracking dialogue
between Hildy and Walter and the other reporters:
• Burns: “I swear it on my mother’s grave.”
• Hildy (pause; double-take): “Wait a minute, your mother’s alive!”
• Burns: “This is the greatest yarn in journalism since Livingstone met
Stanley (orders the office) Use the whole front page. Never mind
the European war. Take Hitler and stick him on the funny page.”
(This is prior to Pearl Harbour)
• The real villains of the film are the politicians who want to hang Earl
Williams to do their electoral votes good.
• The reporters are no angels, however:
• Reporter, filing his copy: “Williams was unconscious when they
opened the desk…” (He was fully conscious and we saw it)
Serious issues
• Hildy makes it clear she is a woman struggling to find her place in a man’s
world. When she realises her interview with Earl Williams, where she
establishes he did not shoot his victim on purpose, is not going to save
him, she tears up her copy and leaves the reporters’ room:
• “I’m going to have babies and care for them.”
• In choosing to return to her paper, the Morning Post, she is acknowledging
that she may never have the babies and domesticity she yearns for. She
also acknowledges that the pull of the newspaper world is stronger .
• When her fiance Bruce realises where her true love lies, he says “I don’t
think you love me at all,” she is so busy working on her story that she
doesn’t even hear him or notice him leave the room.
• “She was represented as a woman working reluctantly, if courageously, in
a man’s world, experiencing the tension of ‘achieving journalistic success
by denying her womanhood.” (Ghiglione, L , ‘The American Journalist:
Fiction versus Fact’ on www.ijpc.org).
Man/Woman
• Just like Mabel Warren in Stamboul Train, she calls
herself a ‘newspaperman’. This happens at the
moment of climax when her fiance Bruce gives her an
ultimatum.
• Hildy is infact paying homage to an earlier film ‘Smart
Blonde’ with the quintessential ‘loveable rogue’ Torchy
Blane.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z3mwWSmp8g
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuuAsgWlmSE
• Jerry Siegel was a big fan of Torchy Blane and based
Lois Lane on her.
The Philadelphia Story
• Not set inside a newspaper office, but examines some
issues of journalism, particularly celebrity journalism,
namely press intrusion into the lives of the rich and famous,
and the effects being a journalist has on the psychology of a
person who really wants to be a writer – a common theme
in US newspaper fiction of the early C20. The journalist
Macauley Connors has the role of truth teller to the upper
classes who can’t see beyond their own vanity
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1PEW45pOog
• Was also a stage play of the same name before being made
into a film starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and
James Stewart.
The character of Macauley
• He’s a kind of puck figure, peeling the scales of
people’s eyes and making them see the truth
about themselves and about who they really
love.
• He invades the privileged world of East Coast
High Society (where even the butler looks down
in him) and sets things right.
• Why is this character a journalist working for a
trashy celebrity magazine? What is the film trying
to say about the relationship between celebrity
and journalism?
Citizen Kane
Kane facts
• Welles was a young man – 25 when the film
opened; his early experience had been in the
theatre, and Citizen Kane is a very theatrical
production.
• Didn’t do particularly well financially when
released
• Is based on the life of William Randolph Hearst,
America’s Northcliffe
• Is described by French director Francois Truffaut
as ‘probably the [film] that has started the largest
number of filmmakers on their careers’
Mankiewicz
• Script written by Herman J Mankiewicz, ‘the Central Park West
Voltaire’. Mankiewicz, a former friend and dinner party guest of
Hearst was hounded ruthlessly by the Hearst press following the
release of Kane.
• Mankiewicz, a former Berlin correspondent of the Chicago Tribune,
reporter for New York World and dramatic critic of the New Yorker,
and New York Times and was familiar with the world of journalism
during the 1920s
• ‘And so Hearst, the yellow-press lord who had trained Mankiewicz’s
generation of reporters to betray anyone for a story, became at last
the victim of his own style of journalism.’ (Kael, ibid)
• His great love was theatre and had written in the 1920s a few plays
for Broadway but like a journalist-writer, was seduced by money
offered in Hollywood and sold himself to the studios for $400 a
week.
Why is Kane great?
• ‘’It isn’t a work of special depth or a work of
subtle beauty. It is a shallow work, a shallow
masterpiece…there are articles on Citizen Kane
that call it a tragedy in fugal form and articles that
explain that the hero of Citizen Kane is time –
time being a sort of proper hero for a modern
picture…but this is to miss why it is a peculiarly
American triumph, that it manages to create
something aesthetically exciting and durable out
of the playfulness of American muckraking satire.’
• Raising Kane by Pauline Kael, 1971
Kane’s wider themes
• It’s about a man who wants to be God, or at least get to be as close to God
as man can – and we all know what happens to that kind of man – from
the Greek tale of Daedalus and Icarus. Icarus wanted to fly like a God…
• There is a deliberate biblical reference to Kane’s constructing for himself a
mythical castle: ‘Two of each, the biggest private zoo since Noah.’
• It’s about a man who had everything, and lost it all; who started out with
papers that “spoke for millions” but ended up retreating into his personal
private shell.
• It’s about the dark side of the American dream
• It’s all about the world of newspapers when they were at their most
powerful. Kane’s political disaster: Chronicle: ‘Candidate Kane caught in
love nest with singer’. Inquirer: ‘Kane Defeat: Fraud at Polls.’
• When his best friend Leland leaves him he says: ‘You talk about the people
as though you own them, as if they belong to you.’
The role and portrayal of press and
journalists in Citizen Kane
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Opening scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r0b_XeRkG4
(Shooting script handout)
Newspapers are of course a great metaphor for the perils of vain gloriousness – hugely important
one day, forgotten the next – so the portrayal of the life of a newspaper tycoon is a rich seam for
both satire and for tragedy
Kane is after all the story of how a brilliantly gifted man who seems to have everything, can lose it
all
Mankiewicz had been impressed by the success of the Broadway play The Front Page, later turned
into the film His Girl Friday with tough guy editor Walter Burns based on the famous Hearst editor
Walter Howey of the New York Mirror. He had a glass eye and it was said of him ‘you could tell
which was the glass eye because it was the warmer one.’
Young Kane is wildly rich, but emotionally neglected; we learn that he started “as a reporter” but
these early years are blurred. Why does he want to run a paper? He says: “I think it would be fun
to run a newspaper” – but it’s more than that – he wants to use the Inquirer as a WEAPON of
REVENGE against his Guardian – and also as a way of destroying his own fortune – it costs him $1
million a year just to keep going.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzhb3U2cONs
Context: Portrayal of the press in 30s
and 40s America
• The most successful of the thirties movies often featured
newspaper settings, or reporters, especially the ‘screwball’
comedies which made the most use of the new invention of ‘talkie’
movie – fast talking, wise cracking reporters distinguished their
films from the previous silent tearjerkers.
• 1930s: Five Star Final and Scandal Sheet and the first film version of
The Front Page. Lee Tracy as the gossip columnist in Blessed Event
and as the press agent in Bombshell, Clark Gable as the reporter in
It Happened One Night; Spencer Tracey as the editor in Libeled
Lady; Stuart Erwin as the correspondent in Viva Villa!; Jean Harlow
stealing the affections of a newspaperman from a girl reporter in
Platinum Blonde; the Torchy Blane films
• In the US, film has been one of the main sources of the
representation of journalism and attracted some of its finest writers
and directors. Why do you think?
Randolph Hearst
• ‘He lives on the largest house on the beach – and I mean
the beach from San Diego to the Canadian Border’
• Real-life multi millionaire tycoon
• Owned his first newspaper as a young man in 1887
• Like Northcliffe, got into newspapers at the moment when
millions of people were becoming literate
• At his peak owned 30 newspapers and 15 magazines
• Built himself a gothic beach house castle, San Simeon and
looted the world’s archaeology to fill it with treasures
• Was a demanding and hands on editor/proprietor who
changed pages at a whim
Why so many films (and good films, as
opposed to American novels) about
journalism?
• Highly functional – generates narratives and events
•
•
•
•
•
•
The journalist is the licensed exposer of things that other people like to keep
hidden away
In the US the role of the reporter as the challenge to state corruption and tyranny
is enshrined in the Constitution
As a person, the journalist can still be sleazy and distasteful which makes him or
her an interesting character, while at the same time, doing a good job, with the
support of the public
If the journalist is about the expose something or someone there is someone
trying to prevent it, which creates the drama
Many Hollywood scriptwriters had cut their writing teeth in newspapers and were
familiar with the world. Many of the 30s portrayals evoke this feeling of nostalgia
by the writers for their younger former selves, who, though they were hard nosed
reporters, were still young, idealistic and thought they were going places
Many of the films have this interesting ambivalence about journalism: it may be a
mucky job but the reporters are dreamers who want to make the world a better
place (seen through the eyes of men who eventually sold out to Hollywood, even
more corrupt than the world of newspapers)
Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951)
A low ebb
• A devastating critique on the trade of journalism and the
manufacture of stories to serve a journalist or paper’s ends without
regard to the victims
• A man is trapped under his car in a cave after an accident and is
found by Chuck Tatum a down on his luck hack
• Instead of rescuing him, Tatum turns the incident into a media
circus with the help of a corrupt sherrif
• Leo eventually dies and the circus complete with fast food stands
leaves town and the story dies
• Tatum is shot dead in his newspaper office by the victim Leo’s wife
• Maybe Billy Wilder was reacting to the all too perfect portrayals of
the 30s and 40s…note the name of the paper’s editor on this clip
introducing Chuck Tatum:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSB54h-rvfU
A merciless portrayal of ‘news values’
• ‘One man’s better than 84. Didn’t they teach
you that at journalism school? Human
interest. You pick up the paper and read about
84, or 284 or a million men like in Chinese
famines. You read it but it doesn’t stay with
you. One man’s different. You wanna read all
about it. That’s human interest. Somebody all
by himself like Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic.’
(Chuck Tatum)
All the President’s Men (1976)
Redemption
• Film adaptation of the book written by Woodward and
Bernstein after their success at the Washington Post
• Takes a spare, documentary-style approach
• The audience, like the reporters only get one piece of
information at a time and has to piece the jigsaw together
• Not much character drama or development – it is all in the
discovery of corruption at the heart of the US presidency
• But it is a textbook version of how to conduct a piece of
investigative journalism; glamorises investigative
journalism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn3MSQogVeY
The China Syndrome (1979)
One of President’s many children
• Seam of tough fearless reporter seeking out the truth follows All the
Presidents Men
• Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas star as journalists exposing a nuclear
incident
• While visiting the Ventana nuclear power plant, television news reporter
Kimberly Wells (Fonda) witnesses the plant going through an emergency
shutdown. Shift Supervisor Jack Godell (Lemmon) notices an unusual
vibration; then he finds that a gauge is misreading and that the coolant is
dangerously low. The crew manages to bring the reactor under control.
• Wells's maverick cameraman Richard Adams (Douglas) surreptitiously
films the incident, despite being requested to turn his camera off for
security purposes. When he shows the film to experts, they realize that
the plant came close to the "China Syndrome" in which the core would
have melted down into the earth, hitting groundwater and contaminating
the surrounding area with radioactive steam.
• As the reporters try to expose the story, the film ends ambiguously with
the film ending in colour bars…have they been murdered for their story?
State of Play
• Back to the journalist as lost loveable rogue who nevertheless seeks
out the truth
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ME87tEX9Qw
• His life (and car, flat, desk, appearance) is a mess. Not only is he
coming up against obstacles in pursuing his journalism, but in
obstacles in his office. His boss is clearly fighting a frontline battle
for survival. Does Cal’s old style journalism fit in with the challenges
of social media? This is an underlying theme that is worth exploring.
There is an excellent documentary (ordered for the library) called
‘Deadline: New York Times’ about one venerable old paper’s fight
for survival – many themes explored in this documentary and in
State of Play – they were made in the same year.
• There are subtle differences between Crowe’s portrayal of Cal, and
John Simm’s portrayal in the BBC TV series
Don’t Blink
• Don’t Blink, written by James Patterson and Howard
Roughan: Nick Daniels, magazine journalist
• Saw All the Presidents Men, age 11 : ‘But as I sat there
in the theatre munching and slurping away, something
amazing happenend, magical, almost. Up on the screen
were two young guys who were on the biggest treasure
hunt of their lives, only they were searching for
something more valuabnle than gold or diamonds, or
even the Ark of the Covenant. I was only 11 but I got it
– and till this day I’ve never wanted to let go. They
were searching for the truth.’ (p.42)