An exploration of how the press has squared up against government and politics on the big screen
Feature by Ivan Waterman
It took just one line from the movie Absence of Malice to damn journalists from Washington to Wapping forever. Recall the scene? Intrepid hackette Sally Field was doing what is commonly known in the trade as a 'stitch up' job on rumoured mobster Paul Newman. Then, she having realised she might have got it badly wrong, she begins backtracking. Writer Kurt Luedtke, through the skilled guidance of director Sydney Pollack, cuts to the chase for her to deliver that infamous quote: " Well, it may not be true, but it's accurate! ".
Now, it has struck media folk since 1981 that this line could easily have been uttered by a certain Kelvin MacKenzie or Piers Morgan on almost every day of their working lives. Or by just about any high flyer currently making up yarns on a Sunday tabloid.
Either way, the Press has had a terrible Press from LaLa land from the days when Orson Welles - God bless you sir - tried to improve your average newspaper man's image through the iconic Citizen Kane.
Even then, newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane was a hopelessly over the top genius-cum-megalomaniac. And the family of William Randolph Hearst (on whom Kane was based) naturally enough disassociated themselves from Welles's 1941 masterpiece.
Amusingly, "Rosebud" (that infuriating red herring from the movie story) stands proudly today as his monument to civilisations gone by in Hearst's grotesquely vulgar San Simeon estate overlooking the Pacific.
But let's go back to the future and the moralistic, issue-driven Absence of Malice, which was pretty much roundly condemned as a poorly judged attack on standards in modern day journalism by ex-newspaperman Luedtke, Pollack and publicity shy Mr Newman.
The New York Times's critic of the day Janet Maslin broke into a fury over Pollack's amoral screen reporter: " Megan Carter violates so many basic rules of journalism from neglecting to check her story to sleeping with the man it is about that it becomes impossible to view
her behaviour as representative. "
Roger Ebert of the Chicago-Sun Times was also horribly unimpressed by the movie, writing: " Would real investigative reporters actually commit Field's mistakes, improprieties, misjudgments, indiscretions, and ethical lapses? Generally speaking, no, they wouldn't. And if they did, they shouldn't have. And furthermore, their editors would never let them get away with it. "
If you needed any more evidence of movie-makers taking a laser to the seemingly wafer-thin Press Code of Ethics, take a look at Volker Schlondorff's powerful German made The Lost Honour of Katharine Blum, in which a lowly but attractive maid is destroyed by the Press because of her one night stand with a suspected terrorist.
Much the same could be said of the thoroughly repellent reporter Charles 'Chuck' Tatum in Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, the story of a cynical media-circus covering a mining accident or the frightening gossip columnist J J Hunsecker, portrayed with magnificent venom by
Burt Lancaster in Alexander MacKendrick's Sweet Smell of Success.
And so, following the lead of Hollywood's finest, directors and producers have enjoyed taking a huge stick to thrash the media with, and in particular, those not so noble men and woman of the print medium. Why should this be? Why should this mistrust exist?
Perhaps it's simply down to cash. High powered captains of industry hate nothing more than a rampant media determined to expose them for what they are whether it's a rail crash or an oil depot going up in flames. Show me the 'talent' who truly respects critics. Or do newsmen get what they deserve, as in the snarling units of the British tabloid Press?
And now for a beacon of light on the murky horizon. Welcome to George Clooney's new black and white Oscar nominated flashback to Fifties television journalism Good Night, And Good Luck. Actually, The Tube as it became known in America has also come in for a severe hammering from movie masters over the years.
Looking firmly down their noses at Mr Logie Baird, the studios have been far from impressed by the ratings obsessed suits who run the small screen. Sidney Lumet directed Paddy Chayefsky's numbing assault on the TV industry in their stunning and scathing Network in 1976, with William Holden and Peter Finch in full flow. Never have so many thrown open their windows and screamed " I'm mad and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
Here was Hollywood lecturing ABC, NBC and CBS on their disturbing dumbing down of the airwaves to the point where a blood-letting "Terrorist Hour" seemed a distinct possibility. Did they learn anything from the simply brilliant celluloid 'lecture'? No way .
Ironically, the television executives tore off in pursuit of Network style 'people programming', developing slates of cheap daytime game shows. The serious TV journalist suddenly found him/herself getting a two minute slot instead of their usual four.
Investigations? Documentaries? They were almost all but shelved to make way for Big Brother formats. The circle isn't turning. If Network was a fundamental warning shot, then Peter Weir's The Truman Show in 1998 was a valid, almost tragic sequel starring Jim Carrey as a man who didn't even know he was on the ultimate all-time reality show. At least Weir
brought the curtain down on an optimistic note.
But, wearing his director's hat, Mr Clooney has bravely taken Good Night, and Good Luck where few have gone before. He also took a supporting role to the quite immaculate David Strathairn in the film that concentrates on the most important episode in the life of the
legendary American television journalist Edward R Murrow.
The dedicated, stubborn Murrow pitched himself and the entire CBS network into conflict with Senator Joe McCarthy and his rabid House Un-American Activities Committee, which was nothing more than a front for Communist witch-hunting. Offending writers and actors were placed on ' blacklists ' and didn't work again. Some committed suicide.
And then, in 1953, there was Murrow. He rode on the scene like a crusader aiming to cut McCarthy down to size. And he got him. Clooney, who directed the movie, said: " I wanted to explore the power and nature of television in another age.
"I loved television and grew up on it, am a big part of it, and believe in it still today. I also believe there are responsibilities that come along with that. This was like dealing with episodes of TV which changed the world. "
The on-air verbal punch-up between Murrow and McCarthy is at the heart of the film with the former seen as the champion of democracy and the latter as a not terribly assertive but cunning bigot who used fear to gain popularity and destroy innocents.
The exceptional Strathairn commented: " Murrow was a true American hero, a legend in his own time. It's history and it is compelling. Sadly, television today seems to be in the grip of the giant corporations and is too frightened to have a voice. Television should be leading not
retreating from the Establishment. "
Clooney agrees. "Television has fallen strangely silent in many ways. First, during the Reagan years, and then during the Bush years. Both newspapers and television have not stood up to be counted. Is this big business controlling the airwaves?"
Good Night, And Good Luck may or may not triumph at the Academy Awards. The aim was, according to Clooney, more about making people aware of the truth. Making them believe in the power of the microphone as a genuine mouthpiece of the people.
Not since Alan J Pakula's All the President's Men with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford breaking the Watergate scandal as Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, has there been a real-life tale in which journalists dug deep and opened the eyes of the world to corruption at the highest level.
Pakula's study of a system rotting from the top downwards figured in just about every awards ceremony in America and Europe. The film industry was, for once, honouring the profession of journalism instead of taking reporters and editors to task.
Filmmakers, like politicians, will always be suspicious of journalists. It's the nature of the beast. To hound, to probe, and to irritate. Senators, Congressmen and MP's love and loathe the media. The boys and girls of the Press are predators, parasites and leeches.
The public's perception of the journalist isn't much better, having been driven by stereotypes on TV shows such as the extremely dark but hilarious Drop the Dead Donkey.. They're liars, and often enough drunken villains you couldn't trust you're your hamster!
Insult away. The ego crazed journalist is out there ferreting away, wanting a taste of the nitty gritty, feeling the headline, and occasionally championing the cause of the underdog in danger of being swamped by rough justice.
They have a healthy disrespect for authority. No wonder they will always scare politicians out of their wits. It was Jimmy Cagney who said in Come Fill the Cup: " When it comes to newspapermen, give me a reformed lush every time. "
Too true.
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