Reel Journalism with Nick Clooney @ The Newseum

This was an event put on by the Newseum on Monday night that Sam got us tickets to through her "insider" connections. I really had no idea what to expect going in as I had not even looked it up online. I thought it was perhaps more of an insider networking event or seminar for newsy types. Luckily, it was not. The event started with Nick Clooney (yes, father of George) on stage in a laid back interview format with Betsy Fischer and David Gregory, both from Meet the Press. The discussion, open to Q&A, touched on a myriad of topics in a short amount of time about the different forms of media, new vs mainstream, how the next generation will reinvent journalism, and some of the tensions between journalists and the sources they cover as their social lives become intertwined.

They then showed the movie State of Play with Russell Crowe, Rachel McAdams and Ben Afflect about a massive corporate conspiracy, a handful of murders, and the shoe leather reporting of an old school investigative reporter, and a new media blogger learning the ropes, and coming to appreciate, how the old guy does it. Writing this, it all seems even more cliche then when I watched it. This was an enjoyable film for what it was, well acted, decent story. It would have been a better story but the writer, instead of just ending it around a fairly plausible conspiracy that is not too far from what probably happens regularly on the hill, makes it into a far fetched whodunit. Oh well.

As a statement about the media, and about glorifying the golden era of journalism, I think this movie fails on many fronts. First, the simplification of the blogger as a young out of college novice who does not check facts and only interested in the lurid, with the shoe leather old schooler as the professional veteran, is a straw man which we really need to move beyond. Most importantly, the headline at the end of the movie gets it totally wrong, placing the lurid details of the congressman involved in a murder above the tampering of corporation undermining an elected official to secure the outsourcing of a $40 billion domestic security industry and undermining our democracy. Not that this is not what would happen in real life, but that is just the point. In real life, newspapers have the ability to drive the lead and they typically choose what sells copy over what is more important to our lives. The movie tries many times through the character of Crowe to critisize this dynamic as a product of blogging and corporate consolidation, but it sure makes it seem like the final story is what he would have desired, and if so, seems to really miss the point.

Another unfortuneate aspect: the story that was developing though much of the movie that someone like Ben Afflects character, while obviously flawed can still be a virtuous player in the process, was completely undermined, as we are basically told that we cannot trust this person at all. Once immoral, always immoral.