Movie night
As a journalism nerd, I love a good newsroom movie. It’s entertaining to watch actors recreate historical investigations, like in Spotlight or The Post (which I still haven’t seen, shame on me). But, like with every other profession, the entertainment industry likes to take some creative liberties depicting it on screen. Inspired by GQ’s “The Breakdown” and Wired’s “Technique Critique,” here’s my take on five journalism scenes in movies and TV shows — with varying degrees of realism.
Godzilla (1998)
I know, I know, this movie is extremely cheesy and very 90’s, but there’s also some fun little scenes for me to pick out. Audrey Timmons is a young, aspiring journalist at a broadcast outlet in New York, trying to get her “big break.”
For context, I have primarily been a print and digital journalist, so the world of broadcast is a bit mysterious to me. However, the first thing that stood out to me is that the anchor’s assistant, Audrey is sent to pick up her boss’ groceries. This is a blatant abuse of power; groceries have nothing to do with how the outlet operates. Also, how is she supposed to get any relevant work done if she’s running around New York trying to get groceries? This definitely displays poor time and resource management on his part.
Audrey then approaches her boss asking for a promotion a literal minute before he goes on air. Clearly, he’s a jerk who doesn’t respect her time, but I don’t think this tactic was going to get him to change his mind, either. To her credit, Audrey makes the strong point that she’s been working hard putting in extra hours for three years and is invested in her work. She expresses that she needs to know her career is going to progress.
His response, of course, is to sexually harass and try to coerce her into “having dinner” with him — definitely another immediate abuse of power red flag. The station should, at the very least, have a robust HR department. A union (like I talked about in my previous post) would also be beneficial to employees like Audrey to prevent both the groceries and harassment from happening.
Spotlight
(Cw: CSA mention)
I first watched this movie when I was a sophomore in college while I was on staff at The Temple News. It’s ultimately a story about telling a story; the Boston Globe’s investigative team goes after the decades of child abuse covered up by the Catholic Church. This is a short little scene where Marty Baron, then-new managing editor of the Globe, discusses the story with the team.
As an editor, it is vitally important that you know what the real story is. Mark Ruffalo’s character is angry that they’ve discovered these atrocities and aren’t publishing immediately, but Baron knows that if they ran it prematurely, nothing would happen on a systemic level.
Having the restraint and foresight to know the long-term impact of the story you’re telling is so on point here. This is the kind of story every rookie reporter dreams of covering, though in reality things like this come up once in a career, if you’re lucky.
I also love this movie because while there are dramatic moments, the filmmaking remains pretty understated and the acting is phenomenal. There’s also a great breakdown of it by Nerdwriter on YouTube, if you’re interested.
If you’re able to watch it, I also recommend watching this clip where the reporters pursue survivors — and perpetrators — of the abuse to build their story. (This one is extremely heavy, so take care.) It doesn’t glamorize what the tedious, but relentless process of reporting and conducting research looks like. It also shows how much thorough work goes into it, how many frustrating roadblocks you can run into, and how important it is to stay calm when face-to-face with people who have done monstrous things.
Hannibal
I’ve only seen the first two seasons of Hannibal (and a little bit of season 3), but the character of Freddie Lounds instantly struck me. In this scene, she lies to Hannibal to get information from him for a story about one of his patients, Will Graham. There’s far more to all these relationships in the show, of course, but this particular scene illustrates a number of journalism-related points.
Firstly, lying to a potential source about who you are and what you’re trying to do is a huge ethics red flag. Journalism is, at its core, about the truth and there is no way to uphold that if you yourself are not forthcoming about your intentions.
Recording someone without their consent in a non-public place is also highly unethical; even more so because in this scene, Hannibal is in the role of a mental health professional. Freddie also recorded his previous session with Will through the office door, which is not only unethical, but straight up illegal. Hannibal was well within his right to make her delete the recordings.
Freddie is known to violate many boundaries in order to get her version of the story without any regard for her own credibility or integrity. She is a one-woman show who runs what is essentially a glorified gossip blog and is about as much of a “journalist” as Perez Hilton is.
West Wing
There are many parts of West Wing that have, in my opinion, aged rather poorly, but this scene is not one of them. White House Press Secretary CJ Cregg can’t do her regular briefing because of an emergency root canal. Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman steps in to “help.”
There’s so many things I love about this scene: the comedy, the acting, Josh’s cockiness when he makes the decision to do the briefing. The takeaway here is that being media trained as a White House staffer does not a White House press secretary make.
The press corps are doing a phenomenal job asking pointed questions and backing each other up when Josh doesn’t give them adequate answers. For a real-life example of this, look to Yamiche Alcindor and Weija Jiang who supported each other during the last administration. Alcindor and Jiang are two women of color journalists who were repeatedly denigrated by Trump when he was in office and both remained true class acts through it all.
Josh most definitely should be in big trouble after such a disaster; he should know better than to be sarcastic and not expect the press to immediately quote back what came out of his mouth. As a journalist, if you’re reporting (responsibly) for the entire nation, you can’t take anything for granted.
Fifty Shades of Grey
(Yes, really.)
There are so many deeply stupid things about this franchise that you probably already know about, but I’m here to complain about the unsexy part.
Anastasia’s roommate, Kate, is sick so she can’t conduct an interview with Christian Grey, their college’s upcoming commencement speaker. Anastasia goes in her stead with the list of prepared questions.
There’s… a lot here, so I’m just going to bullet point it or we would be here forever:
Ana drives from hers and Kate’s apartment to Christian’s office in Seattle, and while it’s not specified exactly how far away that is, the interview is only supposed to be 10 minutes long. There is no reason this couldn’t have been done over the phone, especially because they didn’t even send a photographer along with her to get photos for the story.
Ana isn’t a journalism student, she’s studying English lit. Someone else from the school paper could have filled in, who already understood the process of interviewing someone like Christian. (I talk more about this in my J-School post, if you’re interested in my reasoning here.)
Right after Ana hit record on her recorder, she should have asked, “Do I have your permission to record this interview?” This is standard practice to have proof that both the interviewer asked permission and the interviewee gave their consent.
Ana dropped her pen when she fell through the door and didn’t pick it up. This is your number one tool as a journalist. Don’t be caught without a pen.
Ana didn’t know that Christian was going to be the commencement speaker. This is absolutely wild to me. It’s not enough to have a list of questions in front of you to fire off; going into the interview, you need to know who the person is, their background, and, most importantly, why they are being interviewed. This allows you to ask follow up questions, interrogate respectfully when something they say doesn’t sound quite right, and go deeper beyond the surface level questions that Ana was provided.
Christian was a jerk to Ana asking her first question. I’m sure he gets that a lot from the press, but he doesn’t need to take it out on her.
Ana should have put the recorder on the table or desk between them instead of on her lap, where she’s holding her notebook. The recorder is in the way and would pick up the sound of her writing instead of the actual interview.
Speaking of, she doesn’t take any notes here. I’ve learned the hard way that not taking sufficient notes and relying too heavily on a recording takes way more work than simply looking back at my notes and cross-checking with the recording.
Who wrote these questions? Were they vetted? They don’t form any kind of cohesive story.
Ana getting personal outside of the interview questions, however, is pretty unprofessional. Our job as journalists is not to create a narrative about someone that we think about them personally, but rather to create an environment or structure for them to share their story in an authentic way. This material is essentially unusable. Also, she only has 10 minutes.
Being adopted and being gay are not questions. Unless he built his career and public persona around them, neither of those things have to do with the story being told.
This personal conversation is still on the recording. Bad idea.
Christian offers Anastasia an internship in his telecommunications company, but she’s an English student. They are not the same fields. Also, conflict of interest! She couldn’t really accept it in this context, even if she wanted to.
She puts the pencil she borrowed in her mouth, so good luck returning that.
I can’t imagine what the writers and editors at the school paper are going to do with this interview when she brings it to them. There were only about two or three usable quotes in his answers, which is pretty problematic for a profile.
If you liked this format, let me know what other movies or TV shows you want me to review! I had a great time and I think it would be fun to do a little batch of these every now and again.