Broadcast News
(1987)
Artemus Ward
Dept. of Political Science
Northern Illinois University
James L. Brooks
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Brooks briefly worked as a writer for CBS News in
New York before moving to LA in 1966 to become a
screenwriter.
He had success in TV winning Emmys for writing
various shows such as Taxi and The Mary Tyler
Moore Show.
He won three Academy Awards
(writer/director/picture) for Terms of Endearment
(1983).
Almost 20 years after his 1960s CBS stint, he
returned to the news business—not as a writer but as
an observer.
What evolved from his experiences was the
screenplay for Broadcast News, a movie presenting
worst-case scenarios for network news of the 1980s
and foreshadowing broadcast news of the future.
He went on to develop the Simpsons TV show and
write and direct As Good as It Gets (1997) among
other projects.
Cynicism in the
Post-Watergate Era
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In the post-Watergate era, many have argued that journalism developed a crisis of
confidence against a landscape increasingly dominated by TV, infotainment, and
celebrity obsession.
Broadcast News challenges the mythic notion of journalism as a force for
democratic good.
The film is not about uncovering the truth or exposing the lie. Instead, it is a film
about how we process the news; how accepting smaller human-interest stories,
reported by stylized celebrity anchors, makes it easier to neglect the world at
large.
Aaron provides the critique when he compares Tom to the devil. He tells Jane that
Satan will not appear in scary garb: “He will be attractive; he’ll be nice and helpful;
he’ll get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation; he’ll never do an
evil thing…. He’ll just bit by little bit lower our standards where they’re important.
Just a tiny little bit, just coast along—flash over substance! Just a tiny bit. And he
will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he'll get all the great women.”
Dualities in Film: Work v. Home
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Romantic comedy is about love and
marriage, which confirm traditional bonds
and integrate individuals into the social
and cultural order. In some ways,
journalism movies subvert all that.
While romantic comedies of the 1930s
and 1940s show strong women finding
romance without sacrificing their careers,
the romantic comedies of the 1970s and
1980s show that women who strive for
promotions will inevitably sacrifice love
and romance.
Jane’s inability to have a meaningful
relationship with Tom or anyone else
teaches the lesson: maybe women can’t
“have it all.”
Indeed, all three lead characters: Jane,
Tom, and Aaron are frantic
overachievers, careerists with an aching
void at the center of their lives. The
lesson is the workaholic culture of the
1980s leaves people personally
bankrupt.
Anti-Feminist?
• Writer/Director James L. Brooks said, “I knew that I didn’t want to do
a picture that could be in any way a feminist picture…. There was
great effort given to presenting what I hoped was a new kind of
heroine.”
• A 1988 study of women in TV news reported: “After facing incredible
competition to get into their positions and after working hard to get
promoted [women] find themselves having to make difficult choices
between their careers and personal lives.”
• Many saw the film as anti-feminist by denying Jane true sexual
intimacy. Yet women who worked in network news loved it and it
inspired a new generation of young women to journalism careers.
Dualities in Film:
Public Interest v. Private Interest
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The notion that journalists prey on and exploit their subjects often is validated
by the movies such as with Tom’s interview with the woman who was raped.
Yet journalists are also portrayed as heroes who uncover stories that others
try to suppress or ignore and who uphold the public’s right to know. This is
exemplified by Tom’s confrontation with the Army General.
These conflicting depictions reflect conflicting myths:
There is the belief that journalism should play a central role in the political
process and that people need journalists’ help to govern themselves. That is
in keeping with many or most journalists’ self-image and with official
mythology. It is bound up with other beliefs: that we can govern ourselves,
that citizens can influence events, that the system works, and that the truth
will emerge.
There is also the belief that journalism’s claims to being society’s appointed
storytellers or arbiters of truth are full of bunk. That belief holds that the media
and their vast technological apparatus disempower the citizenry and prop up
the powerful at the expense of the powerless Consistent with outlaw
mythology, it views the press as just another impersonal, oppressive
institution that restricts individual self-determination and liberty.
Holly
Hunter
as Jane
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A talented producer on the rise in a Washington network news bureau, her personal life
leaves much to be desired: she schedules regular intervals when she can have a good cry.
Though she is a smart, responsible journalist, she is seduced both personally and
professionally by television’s empty-headed glamour—as personified by Tom.
She is another long-suffering professional insider whose uncommon intelligence only
causes her grief. The news president tells her: “It must be nice to always believe you know
better: to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.” She sadly replies: “No, it’s
awful.”
She is torn between the past (substantive news as represented by Aaron) and the future
(style and glamour as represented by Tom).
In the end, Jane wins a promotion as managing editor of the nightly news in New York but
fails to find a steady romance. She reveals that “there’s a guy” who “says he’ll fly up a lot”
to visit but we know that long-distance relationships among career-driven singles never
work and so Jane is doomed to life of professional reward and the expense of personal
unhappiness.
The Real Jane Craig
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Brooks drew on several models for Jane, including CBS news producer Susan
Zirinsky and correspondent Lesley Stahl, who was distressed when Brooks
shared scuttlebutt he had heard from being around CBS. “I think you should know
that your bosses consider your stiff, look-into-the camera style as ‘yesterday,’”
Stahl remembered him telling her. “I’d hate to see you left in the dust.”
While still in college, Zirinsky got a part-time job at CBS News. She recalled: “I
was hired full time, while still a full time student. Who could turn it down? I can
make it work. I noticed a tiny desk in the back hallway - a little messy but so tiny it
looked like something out of Alice In Wonderland. It was CBS News reporter
Lesley Stahl's. When I finally met the fully grown adult woman who occupied this
itty bitty desk - I got it. She was the girl in the guy's world. Gender had never
occurred to me until I saw it in play. But it became irrelevant. Stahl was a
workhorse, passionate, driven to find out the truth about Watergate and the White
House involvement. When I was lucky (there's that word again) enough to be
hired full time - I was really lucky - Lesley Stahl became my mentor. I saw her
work and, through sheer force of will, through a world that wasn't ready for
her...but she was ready for it. Stahl was relentless and taught me that was really
only the way to be. Stahl has gone on to become a legend in television news.
She's covered the White House, campaigns, special assignments and of course
now ‘60 Minutes.’ Lesley pushed me past the anxieties I had as the youngest
person in the room. She would say, ‘you're not really a person till you're 25.’ In
fact, she threw a coming-out party on my 25th birthday. Only problem, I couldn't
make it. The Hanafi Muslims had taken over several buildings in Washington,
D.C. and were holding hostages. I was pinned down by men with guns opposite
the B'nai B'rith International Center in the middle of the nation's capitol. . I guess it
was a very ‘Lesley Stahl’ type of experience and so my coming out party was just
a different kind of party.
William Hurt as Tom
• Pretty-boy “journalist” who comes to
the network from local TV sports and
freely admits he knows nothing about
news.
• Yet he is ambitious and knows about
the primacy of style and image in the
coming infotainment era. He sends his
tapes to the networks, gets hired, and
sees in Jane someone he can use to
further his career.
• Tom represents the future of news.
• In the end, he gets promoted and
engaged to a blonde journalist who
early in the movie had been heard
disparaging Jane’s looks.
Albert Brooks as Aaron
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Aaron plays the smart but awkward reporter whose struggles to succeed in a
profession increasingly dominated by corporate profits, infotainment, and
celebrity.
In the end, he takes the moral high road and quits rather than continue to be
undervalued by his corporate bosses.
Though his love for Jane is never realized, in the end he is able to find a workhome balance as a local reporter with a family – though it is not the work-home
balance he ideally wanted with Jane and the network.
The lesson is that one cannot succeed in climbing the corporate news ladder
unless one is willing to sacrifice home, love, and family.
Aaron represents the past, when presumably image and ratings were irrelevant.
News is a Business
• The commercial pressures associated with
news are portrayed throughout the film from
the discussion of whether to televise an
execution, the dumb but pretty anchor who
triumphs over smart but awkward reporter,
or the layoffs from the “higher ups” despite
the voices of conscience who decry what is
happening, yet are powerless to stop it.
Media Concentration
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Is corporatization and media concentration a problem for journalism?
In 1983, fifty corporations dominated most of every mass medium and the biggest
media merger in history was a $340 million deal. … [I]n 1987, the fifty companies
had shrunk to twenty-nine. … [I]n 1990, the twenty-nine had shrunk to twenty
three. … [I]n 1997, the biggest firms numbered ten and involved the $19 billion
Disney-ABC deal, at the time the biggest media merger ever. … [In 2000] AOL
Time Warner’s $350 billion merged corporation [was] more than 1,000 times
larger [than the biggest deal of 1983].
Mother Jones magazine reports that by the end of 2006, there were only 8 giant
media companies dominating the US media, from which most people get their
news and information:
Disney (market value: $72.8 billion)
AOL-Time Warner (market value: $90.7 billion)
Viacom (market value: $53.9 billion)
General Electric (owner of NBC, market value: $390.6 billion)
News Corporation (market value: $56.7 billion)
Yahoo! (market value: $40.1 billion)
Microsoft (market value: $306.8 billion)
Google (market value: $154.6 billion)
Conclusion
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Broadcast News is both a romantic comedy and a commentary on
journalism in transition in the post-Watergate era.
Writer/Director Brooks said: “What the picture was about was three
people who had missed their last chance at real intimacy in their lives.”
While the men find partners in the end, the woman does not and will
not. While professional men can at least find some level of romantic
intimacy, professional women cannot. Women must make greater
sacrifices for their careers than men.
Similarly, journalism was forced to reject or at least significantly
compromise the hard news, substantive past in favor of the profitdriven, style of the future.
The film is titled Broadcast News to point out that there is a difference
between what is broadcast... and what is news.
Sources
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Cabin, Chris, “Broadcast News,” filmcritic.com, 2008.
http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/reviews/Broadcast-News
Ehrlich, Matthew C., Journalism in the Movies (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004).
Pick, Lee Anne, “Style Over Substance: Broadcast News,” in Howard Good ed., Journalism Ethics Goes to the
Movies (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) 97-108