A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

At the Movies

Two new films brilliantly depict the increasingly embattled craft of
journalism.   

The film She Said <[link removed]>, which played
recently at both the 60th New York Film Festival
<[link removed]> and the 30th Hamptons International
Film Festival <[link removed]>, is based on the 2019 book
of the same name by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
<[link removed]>
about the women who were victimized by the crimes of Harvey Weinstein
and the two New York Times reporters' quest to get their stories on
the record. It's the best movie about journalism since 2015's
Spotlight, and before that, 1976's All the President's Men. I'm
saying this as a longtime (now former) journalism professor, not as a
movie critic. Artistic issues aside, these are the movies that best
demonstrate how high-level journalism really works; what a pain in the
ass it is to try to get people who don't want to talk to you to
actually talk to you, and to only publish what you can prove. But
occasionally, all this pays off. This film, as Kantor observed during
the press conference that followed the NYFF premiere, "underlined
everything we believe about journalism and put exclamation points at the
end of it."

She Said tells the story of how the two women did the reporting that led
to their bombshell October 5, 2017, 3,300-word article
<[link removed]>.
The two protagonists display none of the "swashbuckling cool
<[link removed]>"
of Woodward and Bernstein. Rather, they are always polite, show a lot of
empathy, and sometimes cry. Twohey does her work while fighting
postpartum depression; Kantor, while juggling young kids. That their
editor is a woman, as are most of the people they seek to convince to
speak on the record, is appropriate, not only because the story is
itself female-centric, but also because women have increasingly become
dominant in the trade, no doubt in part because men are abandoning what
is more and more a profession that demands a vow of virtual poverty.

The best thing about this movie is that it demonstrates just how damn
difficult, time-consuming, and expensive responsible investigative
reporting is; together with how little profit there is for the news
organizations that undertake it. The Times risked much in backing these
two reporters on their quest, so it's nice that the paper finally got
its movie: Spotlight was about The Boston Globe, President's Men was
about The Washington Post, and even Steven Spielberg's movie about the
Pentagon Papers, The Post, which was the Times' story, was about guess
which newspaper. Still, as the Marxists like to say, it's "no
coincidence" that it was the Times (together with The New Yorker) that
finally broke the Weinstein story. Both are privately owned profitable
publications with a readership that advertisers want to appeal to, and
with readers willing to pay up. Such outlets are few and far between
these days.

Since these stories originally ran, Weinstein was convicted in 2020 of
two charges of committing a criminal sexual act in the first degree and
third-degree rape. Not only is he serving a 23-year prison sentence, he
is also standing trial for more in Los Angeles, and another trial is to
take place later in London. Many corporate practices have changed, most
especially in the entertainment world, thanks to the avalanche of women
who eventually came forward to tell their stories.

Yes, the #MeToo movement has gone too far in some places. Sometimes, its
proponents fail to make sufficient distinction between crimes and mere
creepiness. Allegations are also treated by many people as facts.
Innocent workplace flirting has a become a dangerous business.
Nonetheless, such collateral damage is endemic to all cultural
revolutions, and most sentient people will agree that the world is a
better place thanks to these reporters and especially the women who
risked their reputations and livelihoods to tell them the truth about
Harvey Weinstein and his army of enablers.

I saw another valuable journalistically themed film that played at both
the NYFF and HIFF: Claire Denis's Stars at Noon
<[link removed]>. This one reflects the fact
that-as I wrote back in September 2021
<[link removed]>-hardly
anyone cares about Nicaragua anymore. Back in the bad old days, the U.S.
was willing to not only fund and supply the Contras with deadly weapons,
but mine the country's harbors
<[link removed]>,
hire death squads in nearby El Salvador
<[link removed]>, and help to enable
and then lie on behalf of actual genocide in Guatemala
<[link removed]>.
Elliott Abrams
<[link removed]>,
the pardoned criminal now a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign
Relations, was the Reagan administration's point man on all three,
especially enabling the Guatemalan genocide.

The Denis Johnson novel the film is based on
<[link removed]> is set when
all this action was going on, back in 1984. I spent some time in
Nicaragua, as well as El Salvador and Guatemala, not long afterward,
getting shot at by Contras, protected by Sandinista soldiers, and
drinking in the bar of the Intercontinental Hotel, watching the arms
dealers do their stuff and dining with lefty celebrities doing
"Sandalista" tourism. It was great fun.

Claire Denis could have made a movie like the excellent Under Fire
<[link removed]>, with passionate, sexy
journalists as heroes. Instead, the female American journalist/hero in
this postrevolutionary film cannot sell any serious journalistic
reporting to news organizations back home and is forced to literally
prostitute herself to both rebels and government officials just to
survive (as well as for $50 a throw to anyone drinking late in the hotel
bar). Her former editor literally laughs in her face when she proposes
serious story ideas. In the film as in life, Managua has become a
hellscape-Donald Trump would call it a "shithole" country-but
the CIA remains interested in ensuring that the right American companies
get the oil rights. That, we eventually learn, is what all the killing
turns on. (The movie was shot in Panama because making a movie in
Nicaragua would likely be impossible these days.) The stars-Margaret
Qualley and handsome Joe Alwyn-who gets the girl not only in this
movie but also in Hulu's Conversations With Friends-are both
simultaneously lost, sympathetic, and inscrutable. If She Said explores
a high point in mainstream journalism, Stars at Noon recounts the dregs
of what's left when there's no superpower war going on and the
journalism business therefore has no interest in what remains: a living
nightmare.

[link removed]

I love my neighborhood and I hate how The New York Times is always
trying to endear itself to allegedly "real" Americans by making
nasty comments about it. Steve Coll's review
<[link removed]>
of Margaret Sullivan's memoir contains this swipe: "She makes little
effort to disguise her left-leaning politics, and while she makes her
arguments clearly and with evidence, it's difficult to identify an
opinion that would cause much discomfort in reliably Democratic ZIP
codes on the Upper West Side. She argues at length that The New York
Times badly overplayed its coverage of Hillary Clinton's email
practices during the 2016 campaign, and she concludes that The Times
certainly contributed to Clinton's defeat." Coll disputes this
without evidence, but my point here is that the Times is located just
below us Westsiders, and Coll, now of The New Yorker, was the dean of
the Columbia School of Journalism, just above us. Many Columbia
Journalism faculty, Times, and New Yorker staffers live around here. And
yet in his review, Coll feels compelled to embody the paper's
self-hatred for the world's best neighborhood, together with
defensiveness for the paper's all-but-undeniable role in helping to
deliver the presidency to Donald Trump. He should be barred from
Zabar's for life.

Clip-and-Save Movie Lists
Other great movies about journalism, in (extremely) rough order:
* His Girl Friday (perhaps the best dialogue, and delivery of that
dialogue, of any film, ever)

* Citizen Kane (well, obvi)

* Groundhog Day (mostly because it's one of the best comedies of all
time)

* Good Night, and Good Luck (gets points for being an excellent history
lesson)

* Ace in the Hole (it's always been a nasty business)

* The Philadelphia Story (wonderful movie, but loses points for its
awful class politics)

* The Killing Fields (also good history)

* The Paper (criminally underrated)

* Between the Lines (perhaps my favorite unknown movie)

* Deadline - U.S.A. (those were the days ...)

* Call Northside 777 (those were also the days)

* The Big Clock (still those days ...)

* Under Fire and Salvador (because they are sort of the same movie)

* Almost Famous (just plain fun)

* America's Sweethearts (because I'm a sucker for rom-coms and also
because you'll be surprised by how smart this is; also, it destroys
the notion that "entertainment journalism" is actually journalism;
ditto: Morning Glory

* Libeled Lady (back to those days ...)

* The Insider (should be paired with Good Night, and Good Luck to
demonstrate the downward spiral of truth-telling when corporations take
over ...)

* Network (for its historical significance and weird prophecy)

* Broadcast News (because it's there and pretty good)

* Gentlemen's Agreement (for its historical significance, primarily;
otherwise, not so great)

The below are all moves I saw at either the NYFF or the HIFF and
strongly recommend:
* Decision to Leave

* White Noise

* One Fine Morning

* Tár

* Who Invited Charlie?

Movies that you should see because it will be, ahem, good for you:
* Holy Spider

Movies that you should maybe see depending on who you are:
* Master Gardener

* Personality Crisis: One Night Only

* Aftersun

Movies that you should see only if you want to see, like, a half-hour of
people throwing up and have never seen the far superior Swept Away (the
Wertmuller version, not the Madonna one) even though Woody Harrelson
plays a Communist, Chomsky-quoting luxury cruise captain:
* Triangle of Sadness

Recent dramatic films that also serve as excellent history lessons:
* Till

* Argentina, 1985 (not at either festival but releasing this week)

Today's Music
The other "She Said
<[link removed]>."


See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!
<[link removed]>

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 12 books, most
recently

**We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel** (Basic
Books, November 2022). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal
Media" column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman
<[link removed]>

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