Ink-Stained Retch

The media's fawning coverage of State of Play will make you run screaming...from your newspaper

Matt Welch | April 15, 2009

As filmic tributes to journalistic heroism go, you'd think that the new Russell Crowe/Ben Affleck thriller State of Play would fall far short of, say, All the President's Men. For one, the story is based on the tawdry and fictional personal behavior of a young congressman, not the gross and nonfictional abuse of power by the president of the United States. For another, journalists at the center of the new film commit such crimes against American journalistic mores as covering up for their political friends, paying sources for information, secretly videotaping hotel-room meetings, and cheerfully breaking the law to obtain information.

But such are the depths of U.S. newspaper despair this year, and the corresponding heights of journalistic self-pity, that what was originally a half-trashy BBC miniseries has become, by the time of its premier this Friday, "The last hurrah of Hollywood's hero journalist."

"'State of Play' pays homage to print journalism's role," the L.A. Times' Rachel Abramovitz posited recently. "'What happens when journalists aren't there to ask the difficult questions of politicians?'" Abramovitz asked in her lead. "That's just one concern Kevin Macdonald, the 41-year-old Scottish documentary filmmaker turned director, is raising with his new political thriller."

Director Macdonald and co-star Ben Affleck have been making great publicity hay recently by spoon-feeding journalistic self-regard right back to the embattled newspapers. It may sound "pompous to talk about newspapers' importance in society when you've only made a thriller," Macdonald tut-tutted to the Orlando Sentinel's Roger Moore. "But I'm not a journalist, so I can say it. This is worth talking about in a movie."

Cue applause, as the credits roll. Literally. "I looked around me as a room full of journalists sat, transfixed, during the closing credits," the New Jersey Star-Ledger's Stephen Witty wrote, in a piece headlined, "The 'State' of Newspapers." "No it wasn't because of outtakes, or a sudden don't-blink twist. It was the footage that those credits played out against, a sight that's in real danger of disappearing these days: The presses of a big-city newspaper, roaring to life. [...] It was the movie's background—a big-city newsroom full of swaggering journalists, unemployable-in-any-other-profession eccentrics, toe-to-toe shouting matches and the comforting feeling that maybe, just maybe, you were doing something that needed to be done."

There is more than enough incestuousness in this feedback loop to remind non-newspaper employees anew why big-city journalism can be so off-putting. The newsroom reporters—who, in my decade of personal experience with American newspapers, almost never resemble the "unemployable-in-any-other-profession eccentrics" of celluloid lore, and in fact treat true eccentricity like a rare and communicable disease—just can't stop yammering about themselves.

"Ben Affleck says (print) media matters," went the headline at the Boston Globe online. (Apparently "He Likes Us! He Really Does" was considered too cliche.) The Globe's first two paragraphs on Affleck junketry are about, naturally, the Globe.

Even before "State of Play," his new movie celebrating the watchdog role of newspapers, Ben Affleck was partial to print. He grew up a reader of The Boston Globe and can't imagine his hometown paper going out of business.

"I was definitely shocked to hear about the Globe," the actor told us, referring to The New York Times Co.'s threat to shutter New England's newspaper of record unless it gets concessions from the paper's unions. "I fundamentally misunderstood what was going on. Boston.com has 5.6 million readers a month, and yet this hugely successful news gathering operation is going out of business." (For the record, Boston.com had 5.7 million unique visitors last month.)

But the most bizarre part of this tail-licking exercise is the notion that Russell Crowe's disheveled hero might just be the Last Newspaper Hero that Hollywood will ever feature.

"I couldn't help but think that I was witnessing the dying of a cinematic archetype: the Hero Journalist," Simon Dumenco wrote in Advertising Age. "It feels like a bookend to 'All the President's Men,' with Crowe's worn-down, worn-out reporter character, Cal McAffrey, as the earnest-but-embittered descendant of Robert Redford's and Dustin Hoffman's dashing young Woodward and Bernstein. Hollywood's going to stop making movies like this because, let's face it, newspapers—those that are left—are in no position to inspire yarns like this anymore."

Nonsense on stilts. For other ink-stained protagonists you need look no further than...a week from this Friday, when Robert Downey, Jr. portrays real-life L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez, whose relationship with a homeless cello player became the latest Oscar bid for Jamie Foxx. As long as there are movie rights to be sold, and dreams of seven-figure paydays instead of just six-figure paychecks to be dreamt, the distance between newspapering and screenwriting will be short indeed.

Movies will continue using and romanticizing newspaper reporters for the same reasons they always have: Journalists, like detectives and treasure-hunters and new teachers at troubled inner-city schools, have a workplace excuse to learn an unfolding story right along with the audience. They've become such stock characters that they've built up their own abstracted cinematic characteristics that directors can play off of or lean into (here's guessing, for example, that Russell Crowe's character eats junk food, drinks a bit too much, is known for being politically incorrect, and has a shambolic love life). And reporters tend to treat public policy issues with all the depth of, well, movie directors: See problem. Talk about problem. WHY ISN'T PROBLEM BEING FIXED!

Here's the real problem: The newspapers see themselves as a noble yet endangered species and they can't stop bugging us about it. Is State of Play the Last Newspaper Movie? Think of it instead as the first of many movie treatments about the long, tedious, and over-publicized death of a business that only occasionally resembles its noble cinematic self.

Matt Welch is the editor in chief of Reason.

Comments

|4.15.09 @ 4:19PM|#

Read all about it where? No link.

Mike Laursen|4.15.09 @ 4:21PM|#

I read the L.A. Times review the other day. Oh my god, fawning is not the word for it.

Citizen Nothing|4.15.09 @ 4:49PM|#

You could read the review in my newspaper -- except our movie reviewer was laid off a week ago.

Citizen Nothing|4.15.09 @ 4:50PM|#

..or Film Critic, if you prefer.

|4.15.09 @ 4:53PM|#

You read the movie reviews in the paper, Matt? What?!? Those idiots receive more free stuff from the studios than Julia Roberts.

Jordan|4.15.09 @ 4:55PM|#

God I hope this movie bombs. Judging by the number of previews they've crammed into primetime TV slots, you'd think it was Hollywood's last hurrah.

Jordan|4.15.09 @ 4:56PM|#

Also, somebody screwed up the html. Look at the top of this page.

JP|4.15.09 @ 4:58PM|#

And reporters tend to treat public policy issues with all the depth of, well, movie directors: See problem. Talk about problem. WHY ISN'T PROBLEM BEING FIXED!

You mean just talking about a problem won't solve it? [throws "Poems for Peace" in trash]

|4.15.09 @ 5:00PM|#

My God, the sheer nobility of the journalist.

Cool Cal|4.15.09 @ 5:00PM|#

It's a twofer!!! Death of Newspapers and it involves a Haliburton-esque company, at least that's what I heard (I knew it would be an evil corporation in the end).

Citizen Nothing|4.15.09 @ 5:05PM|#

Epi,
I once got an entire electric guitar in the mail -- with an amp! -- as a fucking press release from Hard Rock Cafe Myrtle Beach.
But we don't get to keep freebies at my paper.

Citizen Nothing|4.15.09 @ 5:07PM|#

The Paper is a good newspaper movie.

|4.15.09 @ 5:14PM|#

The way to get a movie good reviews is to make a movie that appeals to journalists. I can think of two movies off of the top of my head that got rave reviews primarily because they appealed to journalists.

Almost Famous - a movie that has a journalist as its hero and protagonist

Sideways - a movie where a geeky, neurotic, balding middle aged guy bangs a gorgous blond thus appealing to every geeky, neurotic, balding middle aged movie critic, which covers 90% of them.

This is is just the latest example of this phenomenon.

|4.15.09 @ 5:30PM|#

I am not in any way affiliated with journalism or journalists.

I enjoyed Almost Famous, and Sideways what hilarious and awesome.

Jack Thread|4.15.09 @ 5:47PM|#

Detroit, Mich. - Greens can take a bow: Bedbugs are back with a vengeance.

Responding to the biggest bedbug outbreak since World War II, the Environmental Protection Agency hosted its first-ever "bedbug summit" Tuesday outside Washington to address a widening public outcry. Some of the most vulnerable communities are inner cities like Detroit, and the major culprit, as it turns out, was the summit host.

Nine years ago, the zealots at Bill Clinton's EPA banned the pesticide chlorpyrifos (to widespread media and environmentalist hosannas), the most commonly available household product in the world to address bedbugs, cockroaches, and other nuisances. Better known by its trade name, Dursban, chlorpyrifos had been available for 30 years in some 800 products in 88 countries around the world.

But despite widespread protest in the scientific community, EPA Chief Carol Browner erased Dursban from the shelves. "EPA has gone to great lengths to present a highly conservative, worst case, hypothetical risk based in large part on dubious extrapolations . . . and exaggerated risk estimates," said Michigan State University toxicologist J. I. Goodman in a typical response.

Even Dr. Alan Hoberman, the principal researcher whose data Browner cited, told the Detroit News he disputed the agency's interpretation of his findings.

Such critics were also ignored by the press - as was evidence that the nation's urban poor would be most vulnerable to a ban. Children insect-bite allergies and cockroach-induced allergens outnumber pesticide poisoning by 100:1. "Hardest hit will be lower-income families in cities like Detroit, who can ill afford a weekly house call from the Orkin man," warned News writer Diane Katz, now with the Fraser Institute. "Yet that is precisely what the EPA is recommending as a substitute for a couple squirts from a can of bug spray."

Nine years on, Greg Baumann - Senior Scientist at the National Test Management Association - confirms that the Dursban void has been largely unfilled, leaving millions to fight pests with less convenient preventative measures. Extermination, for example, costs between $400 and $900 - out of reach for low-income Detroit families.

And those accountable for this predictable disaster? The very media outlets who were cheerleading the EPA ban now feign ignorance. "Out of concern for the environment and the effects on public health, the EPA has banned many of the chemicals that were most effective in eradicating the bugs in the U.S.," shrugs the AP in graph ten of its story.

And the EPA Administrator who approved the ban? Browner has been promoted to "climate czar" in the Obama administration.

|4.15.09 @ 6:15PM|#

Matt Welch you rock like Slayer.

As do all Matts.

Brett Stevens|4.15.09 @ 7:38PM|#

Did they fawn over it as much as they fawned over BHO?

Hugh Akston|4.15.09 @ 7:38PM|#

I'm looking forward to the first heroic blogger movie. I picture the tippling, slovenly jerk blogger doggedly pursuing a lead through the corridors of power and in the darkest corners of the internet to reveal an evil corporate (natch) plot. But the hook is that he does so between shifts as an office drone (perhaps in the very evil corporation he's blowing the lid off of).

Somebody get Clive Owen on the line.

Paul|4.15.09 @ 7:47PM|#

a big-city newsroom full of swaggering journalists, unemployable-in-any-other-profession eccentrics

He's kidding, right? He's got to be kidding, here. Yeah, he's kidding. He can't be this retarded. He just can't be.

Paul|4.15.09 @ 7:48PM|#

toe-to-toe shouting matches and the comforting feeling that maybe, just maybe, you were doing something that needed to be done."

How ro-fucking-mantic. Toe-to-toe shouting matches. Really? This idiot's never worked in IT before, has he? Oh wait, he's "unemployable in any other profession".

Paul|4.15.09 @ 7:53PM|#

(here's guessing, for example, that Russell Crowe's character eats junk food, drinks a bit too much, is known for being politically incorrect, and has a shambolic love life)

So why am I not a journalist?

JB|4.15.09 @ 10:43PM|#

When they aren't creaming themselves over their leg-tingling Obama, the MSM is busy congratulating themselves on what a great bunch of retards they are.

When things really hit the fan, I hope people take the time to go after the media. They deserve to scream for a long time before they die.

Kolohe|4.15.09 @ 11:46PM|#

I'm looking forward to the first heroic blogger movie. I picture the tippling, slovenly jerk blogger doggedly pursuing a lead through the corridors of power and in the darkest corners of the internet to reveal an evil corporate (natch) plot. But the hook is that he does so between shifts as an office drone (perhaps in the very evil corporation he's blowing the lid off of).

That's "Sneakers", sort of. Also, "The Matrix". Sort of.

Replace 'slovenly' with 'at her peak cuteness' and it's sort of "The Net" as well.

ev|4.16.09 @ 12:01AM|#

Sneakers is a very underrated movie.

Robert Redford, Sidney Pontier, River Pheonix, dan akroyd, ben kingsley....whistler.....

cmon

Tim Cavanaugh|4.16.09 @ 12:01AM|#

1. "I couldn't help but think that I was witnessing the dying of a cinematic archetype: the Hero Journalist," Simon Dumenco wrote in Advertising Age.

Hero Journalist = a reporter who never has to file. Lois Lane, Kolchak, the guy who followed the Incredible Hulk around: Hero Journalist is just somebody who spends all day and night following interesting people and having adventures. You never see them typing - in fact the only hint you get of how boring their career is comes when the blowhard editor threatens to bust them back to covering obits or school board meetings.

2. It may sound "pompous to talk about newspapers' importance in society when you've only made a thriller," Macdonald tut-tutted to the Orlando Sentinel's Roger More.

I hope Roger More deflated that pomposity with a rakishly raised eyebrow.

3 The newsroom reporters-who, in my decade of personal experience with American newspapers, almost never resemble the "unemployable-in-any-other-profession eccentrics" of celluloid lore

They are, in fact, unemployable in any other profession, though maybe not for the reasons they think.

4. If Ben Affleck were really a Southie tough guy, wouldn't he have grown up reading the Herald rather than the Globe? The Globe's for pantywaists.

5. How come nobody ever mentions Absence of Malice among the great journalism movies? It's too long and with pretty flat direction, but I can't think of an earlier storyline that pits an aspirational/elitist reporter against a working class citizen. It's an inversion of the usual movie-reporter dynamic in which a street-smart journalist goes after rich pigs in office towers. It's also, I think, a much more accurate view of reality. Sally Field's apartment interior is a great moment in characterization by decor.

But for the greatest journalist-as-villain movie, you have to see Five-Star Final with Edward G. Robinson as a bitter editor and pre-Frankenstein Boris Karloff as a defrocked reverend now doing investigative journalism. Heavy, man, heavy. And also, AFAIK, the first movie ever to use an ironically cheery music cue over a tragic scene.

6. You're right, JB. They deserve to scream for a long, long time. Unfortunately, they will.

engineer|4.16.09 @ 12:21AM|#

It bugs me when I see the MSM journalists touting their intellectual-ness. Most spout off repackagings of lefty or righty talking points, depending on their bias, and then talk about how they, and only they, can protect society from the veil of government secrecy.

engineer|4.16.09 @ 12:26AM|#

"here's guessing, for example, that Russell Crowe's character eats junk food, drinks a bit too much, is known for being politically incorrect, and has a shambolic love life"

This could also describe an engineering student. I have just finished my fluid dynamics howmework and am taking a short break before starting my assignment on electromagnetic flux. I have a bag of doritos and a case of Pepsi-cola to get me through the next 2 or 3 hours.

¢|4.16.09 @ 12:27AM|#

You never see them typing

Movie reporters have a Some Say random-disattribution macro to run on press releases, so they don't have to waste potential adventure time disguising them manually.

(A wizard did it.)

Paul|4.16.09 @ 2:28AM|#

the first movie ever to use an ironically cheery music cue over a tragic scene.

First movie to use musical counterpoint? Noooo, can't be. (I can produce no evidence of my own)

Anonymous|4.16.09 @ 3:00AM|#

Paul, I'd be interested in a list of pre-1931 movies that do such. I don't doubt they exist, but I have no idea how to compile such a list myself.

LarryA|4.16.09 @ 3:18AM|#

What happens when journalists aren't there to ask the difficult questions of politicians?

Given that current national newspaper articles are telling us how Mexican drug gangs are using automatic weapons, grenade launchers, machine guns, rocket launchers, and hand grenades; therefore we need to fix the problem with a ban on semiauto rifles; I'd say their capability to ask even simple questions is in a state of play.

My wife is a reporter for a small-town weekly. Journalistic heroism is covering yet another boring evening school board meeting, plucking the nuggets parents and taxpayers need to know, following up to nail all the answers, and crafting them into a literate story before the next day's deadline. Hollywood couldn't "do" that story if it's life depended on it.

technomist|4.16.09 @ 6:49AM|#

What happens when journalists aren't there to ask the difficult questions of politicians?

Bloggers:

http://www.order-order.com/

Guido Fawkes brings about demise of Gordon Brown's top adviser. Labour Party starts to crack apart.

http://www.frankfield.com/blog/q/date/2009/04/14/darkness-at-the-heart-of-the-labour-party/

MSM jumps on bandwagon, ignoring years of lobby journalists uncritically sucking up to get a chance of regurgitating politicians' table scraps.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/featuresopinon/display.var.2502239.0.Is_anyone_capable_of_cleansing_Labour.php

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6083376.ece?openComment=true

ed|4.16.09 @ 8:08AM|#

the long, tedious, and over-publicized death of a business

An enterprising reporter should survey Journalism School enrollment statistics for the past half-decade. Is the profession still churning out new acolytes? Is it drying up? If so, who will be the new journalists? The stay-at-home amateur/crackpot bloggers? The bitter print-refugees?

Anonymous|4.16.09 @ 8:32AM|#

The stay-at-home amateur/crackpot bloggers?

If you don't like Matt Welch, just say so.

ed|4.16.09 @ 10:07AM|#

It's a legitimate question. Will blog schools replace journalism schools?
Why pay the tuition when anyone can operate a one-man blog from his bedroom?

|4.16.09 @ 10:30AM|#

What happens when journalists aren't there to ask the difficult questions of politicians?

We elect an underqualified neophyte and a Congress that inspires spontaneous mass protests?

BakedPenguin|4.16.09 @ 10:54AM|#

Much as I hate to agree with Cavanaugh, Absence of Malice is a great journalism movie, or just a great movie, full stop. A crooked politician, a dirty prosecutor, and the hero is a small businessman who is being messed with by the above, unions, and a journalist who prints what she is fed by the government. I'm surprised it doesn't have more libertarian cred.

threeofclubs|4.16.09 @ 11:16AM|#

In the UK it would have been great to have had a huge influx of Polish or Bulgarian journalists.

Matt Welch|4.16.09 @ 11:59AM|#

An enterprising reporter should survey Journalism School enrollment statistics for the past half-decade. Is the profession still churning out new acolytes?

Yes, enrollment is actually up. I don't know about over the past *five* years, but (according to something I recently read) over the past year or two.

|4.16.09 @ 12:06PM|#

What does the fact that enrollment is up at the trade schools for an industry in notable decline over the last several tell you about the enrollees? Who would look at journalism and say "Yeah, there's a red-hot future in that business. Sign me up!"?

Matt Welch|4.16.09 @ 12:56PM|#

What does the fact that enrollment is up at the trade schools for an industry in notable decline over the last several tell you about the enrollees?

The thing is, I'm not sure the *journalism* industry is in decline at all. In fact, I suspect that it's been in sustained growth mode for a while now, what with the proliferation of tens of thousands of new journalistic outlets. The *newspaper* business, yes, that's losing jobs and profitability, as is the Big 3 network nightly news. But at the longer end of the tail, I suspect things are actually pretty good.

Also, note -- a lot of people go into J-school to become P.R. people, or joint human rights organizations, that kind of thing.

|4.16.09 @ 3:00PM|#

Those gosh darn movies about newspapers!! I can't believe newspaper reviewers like a movie about newspapers. Oh, by the way, where's my movie about places like Reason online? Oh yeah, nobody cares.

|4.16.09 @ 3:04PM|#

Paul Abbot who wrote the original series for the BC is great - you should check out the original and his other works, especially Shameless...

|4.16.09 @ 4:45PM|#

Speaking as a copy editor who was laid off this week by the Orlando Sentinel (where movie critic Roger Moore writes), I just wanted to point out:

A) His name is spelled with two O's,

and

B) Enjoyed your piece. There's quite enough navel-gazing going on.

Joe Saltzman|4.16.09 @ 8:33PM|#

For more information on the image of the journalist in popular culture, take a look at ijpc.org
It's the definitive Web site for anyone interested in the image of the reporter in movies, TV, fiction and other aspects of popular culture.

Jumbie|4.17.09 @ 4:31PM|#

"I'm looking forward to the first heroic blogger movie. "

Balko's getting a movie?

SoulHonky|4.17.09 @ 5:25PM|#

As usual, most journalists miss the deeper story. They embrace the film as a love letter to newspapers but overlook the fact that it took three murders for them to notice a vast military conspiracy.

And the guy who is the key source that blows it all open was one phone call away the whole time (and was already a source for another reporter).

As for the film itself, it's OK. The Interpreter meets The Paper (although it's better than The Interpreter). An agreeable albeit forgettable thriller.