Insight | Some of the best movies on journalism

Paulo Barbosa

Because of its conflicted nature, journalism has been portrayed by American films since the beginning of the cinema industry. Following the work of a Boston Globe investigative team, this year’s  Best Picture Oscar winner, “Spotlight,” is just the latest in the line of great movies about journalists.
On the top of my list is “All the President’s Men” (directed by John Schlesinger 1976), about the struggle of two Washington Post journalists – Bernstein and Woodward, played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman – to uncover what some consider the biggest scoop ever: the Watergate scandal that brought down nobody less than US president Richard Nixon. The movie shows the merits of good journalism and its reach in a democratic society. Two persuasive reporters work almost like detectives, fact-checking clue after clue until they have no doubt that the president himself is implicated in the conspiracy. Quote of the film: “Deep Throat says our lives may be in danger.”
But journalists are not always depicted by Hollywood as the “good guys.” One of my all time favorites is the little-known “Ace in the Hole” (directed by Billy Wilder, 1951), where an unscrupulous former big-city reporter (played by Kirk Douglas) creates a media circus around a man trapped in a cave. The film foresees the sensationalism of 24-hour TV news channels and the human obsession with tragedy that feeds media sensations. Quote: “I can handle big news and little news. And if there’s no news, I’ll go out and bite a dog.”
Also shot during the 50s, “Sweet Smell of Success” (by Alexander Mackendrick, 1957) portrays New York’s most influential columnist, J.J. Hunsecker (played by Burt Lancaster), and his rotten dealings with a press agent. Quote: “You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.”
Filmed in black and white, “Good Night and Good Luck” (directed by George Clooney, 2005) depicts the opposition of great journalist Edward E. Murrow to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Murrow (played by the circumspect David Strathairn) is on a quest to protect freedom of speech in America and has to fight not only McCarthy but also the management of CBS, the TV station he works for. Quote: “We’re going to go with the story because the terror is right here in this room.”
Another genre in which movies relating to journalism are common is, of course, crime. “Capote” (directed by Bennett Miller, 2005) depicts writer Truman Capote’s investigation into a sordid criminal case in the US countryside. Capote (beautifully interpreted by Philip Seymour Hoffman) develops a close relationship with one of the killers, who is waiting for the electric chair. Quote: “If I leave here without understanding you, the world will see you as a monster. I don’t want that.”
There are many movies about journalists as foreign correspondents who witness atrocities beyond imagination and risk their lives to tell the world what they saw. One of them is “Killing Fields” (directed by Rolland Joffe, 1984), about a New York Times correspondent in a Cambodia ravaged by the “Khmer Rouge” revolution. He tells the story but is torn by feelings of guilt after leaving behind his Cambodian friend and translator.  Quote: “This is a big story, a major story, understand? We have got to get down there!”
From a humorous perspective, “Wag the Dog” (by Barry Levinson, 1997) is a great movie about the power of mass media, particularly television. What happens when a spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer join hands and make up a war to cover-up a presidential sex scandal? Quote: “The American people bought that war. War is show business – that’s why we’re here.”
Biography is another genre where journalists often appear as observers to the lives of great men, such as the epic “Gandhi” (directed by Richard Attenborough, 1982), where Charlie Sheen plays a reporter who accompanies the Indian martyr during some key moments of his life.
Not exactly a biography, the classic “Citizen Kane” (by Orson Wells, 1941) should also be included. Like Charles Kane (or is it William Randolph Hearst?) said, “If the headline is big enough, it makes the news big enough.”