Long before the profession of journalism fell prey to culture wars, movies about reporters tended to depict them as the-people-have-a-right-to-know crusaders or, more often, as doughy guys in ill-fitting suits who chainsmoke, drink from flasks hidden in their desks, and crack wise to each other.
Speaking as someone who has worked in the news media and known many a reporter in my day, I can attest that there is a bit of truth to both stereotypes. Journalism flicks have evolved over the years as the public’s view of the profession has grown more ambivalent. Below are my picks for the 10 best of the genre:
10. The Paper (1994, dir: Ron Howard)
This loving ode to the newspaper business is among Ron Howard’s more finely calibrated crowd-pleasers. Michael Keaton is Henry Hackett, an editor for the fictitious New York Sentinel, on a pivotal day in his career. He must decide between remaining with his scrappy tabloid or accepting a job offer for better money from a highfalutin’ paper across town. His pregnant wife, played by Marisa Tomei, thinks the choice should be obvious, but Henry isn’t so sure. The Paper’s screenplay, by brothers David and Stephen Koepp, tidily hits the right beats, balances comedy and drama, and gives plenty of room for an impressive cast that includes Glenn Close, Robert Duvall and a pre-crazy Randy Quaid.
9. Medium Cool (1969, dir: Haskell Wexler)
Cinematographer Haskell Wexler had lensed his share of landmark films (In the Heat of the Night and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? among them) by the time he tried his hand at directing. His first and only narrative feature, Medium Cool, is bracingly experimental. A blurring of fiction and reality, it follows a fictitious TV news cameraman, portrayed by Robert Forster, as he bounces through the cataclysmic news events of 1968, most notably the chaos and bloodshed that erupted on the streets of Chicago at that year’s Democratic National Convention. Our introduction to Forster’s character, John, is pungent; he and his sound man (Peter Bonerz) are dutifully filming a grisly car crash before they bother to think about calling for an ambulance. The dichotomy between what we see and how we register it intellectually and emotionally is at the heart of the story that Wexler fashioned around his embrace of cinema vérité and its commitment to letting reality unfold.
8. Shattered Glass (2003, dir: Billy Ray)
New Republic magazine star reporter Stephen Glass found the kind of wild human-interest stories that seemed too weird to be true, and for good reason. They were bullshit. A Forbes article in 1998 eventually exposed the hotshot reporter to be a pathological fabricator who had invented many of his pieces. Writer-director Billy Ray details that real-life scandal in the smart, absorbing Shattered Glass. Hayden Christensen, a dud as young Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, is startlingly perfect as Glass, whose “are you mad at me?” mantra masks a shrewd manipulator. Peter Sarsgaard is equally strong as Charles Lane, the New Republic editor who weathered the storm.
7. Good Night, and Good Luck (2005, dir: George Clooney)
For George Clooney’s sophomore effort in the director’s chair, he turned to the inspiring story of legendary broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow and his 1954 on-air takedown of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-communist witch hunts. Accomplished character actor David Strathairn was born for the role of Murrow, and he portrays the CBS News icon as a beacon of Fourth Estate courage. Shot in crisp black and white and cleverly showing only archival footage of McCarthy, Good Night, and Good Luck is steady, elegant and powerfully restrained. Clooney and co-writer Grant Heslov modified their screenplay for the Broadway stage in 2024, with Clooney as Murrow. It is more than a little sad that the movie now feels like such a relic, set in a time when the press was both brave and influential.
6. The Insider (1999, dir: Michael Mann)
Michael Mann brings his muscular storytelling to the real-life saga of Jeffrey Weigand, a Brown & Williamson research executive who in 1996 blew the proverbial whistle on how the industry manipulated its product to maximize addiction. The Insider is about more than the ethical and moral failings of Big Tobacco. Al Pacino plays 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman, who successfully persuaded Weigand, portrayed by Russell Crowe, into an on-camera interview with Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer). Mann and co-writer Eric Roth then shift focus from underhanded Big Tobacco to underhanded Big Media. Cowed by Brown & Williamson’s threat of litigation, CBS declines to air the interview. It is worth noting that 60 Minutes eventually ran the Weigand piece. Considering the travails in which CBS News is currently mired, the network’s transgressions chronicled in The Insider seem almost quaint by comparison.
5. Spotlight (2015, dir: Tom McCarthy)
Like the four-person Boston Globe investigative team depicted in the film, Spotlight is lean, no-frills and devastatingly effective. Tom McCarthy’s ink-stained newspaper thriller is reminiscent of 1976’s All the President’s Men in that it concentrates on the methodical legwork of reporting. This time, however, the culprit isn’t a presidency, but instead a Boston Catholic Church hierarchy that for decades covered up clerical sexual abuse. Also unlike All the President’s Men, Spotlight won the Academy Award for Best Picture. An ensemble cast that includes Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Liev Schreiber does justice to McCarthy and Josh Singer’s riveting, Oscar-winning screenplay.
4. Ace in the Hole (1951, dir: Billy Wilder)
In Billy Wilder’s noir followup to 1950’s Sunset Boulevard, Kirk Douglas is at his cleft-chinned cockiest as Chuck Tatum, a one-time big-city newspaper reporter now wasting away in a sun-baked New Mexico town. Good fortune arrives for Chuck in the form of someone else’s misfortune. A poor lug named Leo (Richard Benedict) gets trapped in a cave dwelling; Chuck senses a story he can exploit and sensationalize to get himself back to the East Coast dailies. Wilder’s original title was The Human Interest, and it is no small irony that Chuck engineers his human-interest scoop by being anything but humane. Loosely based on the real-life tale of trapped cave explorer Floyd Collins, Wilder’s roasting of tabloid journalism is mercilessly dark and proved to be too bleak for 1951 audiences. It didn’t help that Paramount saddled the picture with the God-awful name The Big Carnival shortly before release.
3. Network (1976, dir: Sidney Lumet)
Paddy Chayefsky’s bitter and biting screenplay for Network anticipated the corporatization, diminution and eventual capitulation of broadcast news. Veteran network news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch, in an Oscar-winning performance), upon learning he will be forced into retirement, calmly tells viewers he will blow his brains out on next week’s broadcast. His boss and longtime friend (a craggy William Holden) is understandably concerned about Howard’s mental state, but the network’s vice president of programming (Faye Dunaway, also Oscar-winning and never better), sees a ratings bonanza in the making. The next broadcast proves her right. Howard doesn’t blow his brains out, but a successive rant about the agony of contemporary life culminates with his urging viewers to go to their windows and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Network is brilliant satire that has come discomfitingly close to real life.
2. Broadcast News (1987, dir: James L. Brooks)
I never worked for a big broadcast network, but I toiled long enough at an Oklahoma CBS news affiliate to recognize that Broadcast News comes from a very knowing place. As news producer Jane Craig, Holly Hunter is a beautifully calibrated mix of workaholic doggedness and the sort of neurosis that can trigger uncontrollable sobbing. Pining for Jane is her coworker and friend, smart but nebbishy reporter Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks). Jane, however, finds herself drawn—against her better judgment—to Tom Grunick (William Hurt), a handsome new hire of dubious intellect being groomed by the network for bigger things. Tom stands for everything Jane abhors in TV news, and yet … she wants the dude. Broadcast News probes the tensions between hard-hitting investigative journalism and soft news, but always with terrific humor and always grounded in specificity of character. Hunter, Hurt and Brooks are all superb.
1. All the President’s Men (1976, dir: Alan J. Pakula)
Alan J. Pakula’s expertly crafted dramatization of how two intrepid Washington Post reporters broke the Watergate scandal inspired a generation of young people to throw caution to the wind and become journalists. I was one of ‘em, and it’s no wonder. Scripted by the great screenwriter William Goldman, All the President’s Men is one of the best procedurals ever committed to film. Miraculously, Pakula makes painstaking research look suspenseful, even as the story’s outcome is a matter of historical record (SPOILER ALERT: Tricky Dick had to resign the presidency). Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are idealized versions of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, respectively, and they’re backed by a first-rate supporting cast including Jason Robards Jr. (who earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Post editor Ben Bradlee), Jack Warden and Martin Balsam. Hal Holbrook is the anonymous source (many years later revealed to be then-FBI deputy director Mark Felt) whom Woodward dubbed “Deep Throat.” Oh, and playing himself is Frank Willis, the real Watergate security guard who discovered the burglary of Democratic National Committee offices.
Honorable mention: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004, dir: Adam McKay), Between the Lines (1977, dir: Joan Micklin Silver), Civil War (2024, dir: Alex Garland), His Girl Friday (1940, dir: Howard Hawks), Nightcrawler (2014, dir: Dan Gilroy), Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011, dir: Andrew Rossi), The Post (2017, dir: Steven Spielberg), Salvador (1986, dir: Oliver Stone), September 5 (2024, dir: Tim Fehlbaum), Zodiac (2007, dir: David Fincher)
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 