When Cal McCaffrey, the news reporter in the movie “State of Play,” refuses to pass on to his paper information harmful to a friend of his, is he turning his back on his responsibility to his readers? When reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein pressure reluctant sources to talk about the Watergate break-in in the movie “All the President’s Men,” are they going too far? When a newspaper editor in “The Paper” ignores information that negates the front page story she’s just OK’d, who is going to hold her responsible for her actions?
Why, in real life, does the U.S. media get such specific protection in the First Amendment to the Constitution? And if, as Matthew C. Erlich says in Journalism in the Movies, movies “can be read as a culture thinking out loud to itself,” what do these movie portrayals tell us about our culture?
These are the sorts of questions we’ll discuss in this course as we explore the ways journalists are portrayed in films and how those depictions reflect society’s hope for as well as concerns about the role of the media in a democracy.
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