Muckraking in L.A.

Muckraking in L.A.

FROM THE LEFT SIDE OF THE BALCONY | Journalists are back in style in Hollywood—for now.

The Oscar season is upon us, and given some recent films, it’s a good time to look at Hollywood’s often contradictory portrayal of journalists. Sometimes Hollywood shows reporters as buffoons and self-serving egomaniacs. Then it swings in the other direction, depicting reporters as heroes, as in the recent films Kill the Messenger, Truth, and the Oscar-nominated Spotlight. All had long runs in the East Bay. Hollywood’s portrayal of reporters tells us a lot about both journalism and American politics.

During the 1930s Depression, the film industry cranked out light entertainment aimed at taking people’s minds off the crisis. The Front Page (1931) set the standard for comic, mendacious journalists who do anything to get a story. A scheming editor and reporter manipulate the words of a death row inmate to juice up a story, not unlike today’s tabloid journalists. Except in The Front Page, the reporter actually helps the inmate escape.

The far better remake, His Girl Friday (1940), featured Cary Grant as the conniving editor and Rosalind Russell as the reporter fighting cops, corrupt politicians, and fellow journalists in one of Hollywood’s all-time great screwball comedies.

By the 1950s, the image had changed, fitting with McCarthy-era politics. Teacher’s Pet (1958) features Clark Gable as an old-fashioned hard-knocks newspaper editor, not a crusader. He butts heads with Doris Day as a college professor dedicated to professionalizing journalism. Of course, they fall in love. It’s a sappy comedy and should have ended with Clark Gable declaring, “Frankly, Doris, I don’t give a damn.” But it didn’t.

In the 1970s, Hollywood began to reflect the political upheaval of the 1960s and produced a number of fine films with journalists as central characters, including The China Syndrome (1979). Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas play a TV news team investigating the cover-up of safety hazards at a nuclear power plant. Even today it remains a cautionary tale about the dangers of nuclear power.

In All the President’s Men (1976), Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman portrayed Washington Post reporters uncovering the Watergate cover-up. The film helped recruit students to journalism departments for years to come.

Hollywood producers claim they don’t insert politics into films. Samuel Goldwyn was credited as saying, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.” Producers argue that journalists are no more reviled/celebrated than doctors, lawyers, or architects. But directors have political views, and their movies reflect the times. Liberals like crusading journalists; conservatives don’t.

In Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies of the 1970s and in Die Hard (1988), reporters were portrayed as sniveling ego maniacs willing to sacrifice ordinary people for career advancement.

I think the best films depict the real struggles journalists go through to get a big story published. Kill the Messenger (2014) shows the difficulties faced by Gary Webb, the San Jose Mercury News reporter who uncovered the link between CIA-financed Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries and the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles.

Actor Jeremy Renner portrays Webb as a dedicated but deeply troubled man who went up against the contras, the U.S. government, and ultimately his own editors. Webb later committed suicide, but the film will likely be seen by more people than ever read his articles or book.

The new film Truth (2015) is far weaker. It tells the story of Dan Rather’s infamous 60 Minutes II segment revealing that George W. Bush went AWOL from the National Guard and pulled strings to avoid service in Vietnam. Truth shows how even experienced reporters and producers made serious errors by not checking sources more thoroughly, although their basic story was true. Unfortunately, the film falls short cinematically, failing to build tension or develop characters.

Cinematically and politically, Spotlight (2015) is by far the best of the recent crop of journalism films. It received the Oscar’s Best Picture nomination this year. The film depicts the Boston Globe’s 2001 investigation of the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of pedophile priests.

Spotlight realistically shows how important stories are often ignored or distorted by the mainstream media. Corporate owners don’t normally call editors to enforce censorship. The corporate elite relies on reporters’ ideological biases and acceptance of the conventional wisdom of the moment. Spotlight shows the cynicism and ideological blind spots that initially led Globe reporters and editors to consider victims as crackpots and to believe the lies of church leaders.

Even though the audience knows the outcome, the film manages to build tension. It features fine acting by Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, and Liev Schreiber. Schreiber, who usually plays the tough guy, delivers a nuanced performance of a socially shy managing editor who is determined not only to uncover the scandal, but to fix the blame on the church as an institution.

For the moment, the Hollywood pendulum has swung back to praising reporters who battle the establishment. Now if only society praised these journalists and made movies soon after time of publication rather than decades later—that would be a story.

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Speaking about films and journalists: How about that Sean Penn? My old buddy caused quite a stir by getting an exclusive interview with Mexican drug lord El Chapo. He took a lot of unjustified criticism from journalists who were basically jealous that they didn’t get the story.

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If Hollywood wants to make a good movie about heroic journalists, it could start with my old friend, former Bay Area resident and Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian. He was held in an Iranian jail since July 22, 2014. Right-wing Iranian judiciary and intelligence forces trumped up charges of spying and subjected him to a kangaroo court trial. He was released along with some other American prisoners in mid-January.

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In case you missed them . . . Oscar season is a great time to catch movies you missed the first time around. Check out East Bay theaters or online streaming services for these.

Trumbo depicts the life of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo who, because of his Communist Party membership, was blacklisted as one of the Hollywood 10. Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston, Oscar nominee for Best Actor, does a great job of capturing the contradiction of a dedicated communist who was also a wealthy man. However, director Jay Roach and screenwriter John McNamara let Hollywood moguls off the hook for their role in promoting the backlist and instead blamed the repression on newspaper columnist Hedda Hopper. But it’s a film worth seeing.

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Oakland journalist Reese Erlich writes From the Left Side of the Balcony every month. Follow him on Twitter @ReeseErlich, on Facebook (Reese Erlich Foreign Correspondent) or contact him by email, ReeseErlich2@hotmail.com

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