Chapter 2 - Literature Review

Journalism is a domain of moral choices, occasionally involving a melodramatic

interplay between good and evil, which probably explains why the news media have

proved such a fertile source of movie story-lines1. Over the years, movies have depicted

reporters as hard hitting, honest men and women who speak truth to power or corrupt

self-aggrandising maniacs who would do anything for high circulation or ratings. Best

filmmakers have turned their talent to journalism movie genre, as Matthew C. Ehrlich, a

journalism professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign, righteously refers

to, in his excellent book, Journalism in the Movies (2004). In the journalism movie genre:

movies that focus on reporters and the news business; a common theme which is their

dual message about the world of journalism.

Ehrlich wrote, “They have exalted professional virtue by telling tales of ethical

practitioners versus amoral hacks; at the same time, they have broadly hinted at how

much fun amoral hacks can be.” Hollywood wants to entertain, to offer diversion and an

escape from reality. Case in point in why some films glorify journalism while others

depict journalists as scrupulous and amoral characters. “In journalistic movies, viewers

have the satisfaction of seeing the press confirm their fondest hopes and deepest fears”,

(Ehrlich, 1997, p.278). Such celebrations of the press have appeared throughout the

history of the journalism movie genre while responding to changes in social and historical

context.

1 Hargreaves, I., (2005), Journalism, A very short introduction, Oxford University Press, p. 109

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Filmmakers have paid considerable attention to journalism (Zynda 1979, p. 17). In

fact it is very much to Hollywood that journalism came to attend its inky glamour2.

Zelizer (2004, pp. 187, 190) argues that cultural studies should be more attuned to how

that image is distinguished by ‘journalism’s reverence for facts, truth, and reality’. At the

same time, she says scholars must critically examine the contradictions within

journalism’s self-image, including those between its ‘informative, civic, and rational

sides’ and its ‘pleasure-inducing, entertaining, or simply affective ones’. Professor of

journalism Joe Saltzman, Director of the Image of Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC)3

created a fine online database about fictional journalists, which is constantly being

updated. Langman refers to 1,025 American journalism films that came into being

between 1900 and 1996 (Langman, 1998)4. More than 2,100 titles for the same period of

time may be found in the cinematography From Headline Hunter to Superman, which

also includes international films and TV productions (Ness, 1997)5. Alex Barris’s book

Stop the Presses! (1976), is also considered a milestone in the literature of this topic as it

was the first complete study of the cinematic image of journalists. A recent book by Brian

McNair, Journalists in Film, Heroes and Villains, (2010), excellently portrays journalists

in film between1997-2008.

Popular representations of journalism such as novels, plays, and movies have been

fruitful sites for such inquiry.6 Many have been written by onetime journalists and hence

2 Feeney, M., (2004): Nixon at the movies: a Book about Belief, University of Chicago Press3 A project of the Norman Lear Centre, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California in his yearly updated database, 2009 edition, boasts of 71,600 items including films, TV, fiction and non-fiction, radio, short stories, plays, cartoons, comic books and comic strips, music and many more see www.ijpc.org 4 Langman, L., (1998): The Media in the Movies: An Illustrated Catalog of American Journalism Films, 1900-1996, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co.5 Ness, R., (1997): Headline Hunter to Superman: A Journalism Filmography, Lanham, Md., London6 Zelizer, B., (2004), Taking Journalism Seriously:News and Academy, Thousand Oaks:Sage, p.187,190

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afford an opportunity to view ‘journalism through popular culture has provided models

for real-life journalistic conduct, with the film of All the President’s Men (1976) a prime

example. Schudson (1992, p. 126) says it has promoted journalism’s ‘central myth’, that

two young reporters and their newspaper brought down a corrupt president. The recent

film Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) depicted historical moments in which the press

triumphantly lived up to its theoretical ideal by exposing McCarthyism. In real-life cases

of journalistic shame have turned to the spotlight of Hollywood such as Shattered Glass’s

portrayal of a young magazine writer’s fabrication and The Insider’s story of corporate

greed and cowardice in network TV news. Yet in many other movies, journalists have

given the impression that ‘journalists are hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, dim-

witted social misfits concerned only with twisting the truth into scandal

and otherwise devoid of conscience, respect for human dignity or a

healthy fear of God’ (Rowe, 1992, p. 27), others conclude that

“journalists are rude, many times divorced, hard-drinking, cigarette-smoking, social

misfits who will do anything for a front-page byline, with few women or minorities in

managerial positions and editors concerned only with profits – that is, if you believe what

you see in most movies” (Gersh, 1991, p. 18).

Movies are powerful purveyors of myth7, however, movies do not always necessarily

‘serve and preserve social order’; they also potentially ‘have the capacity to change the

social order’ (Lule, 2001, pp. 191–2), or at least highlight the contradictions within it.

Media scholar, John Fiske has gone even further in asserting (1989, pp. 2, 6–7) that,

there is always an element of popular culture that lies outside social control that escapes or opposes hegemonic forces. Popular culture is always a culture of conflict, it always involves the struggle to make social meanings that are in the

7 Ehrlich, Matthew C, (2006) Facts, truth and bad journalists in the movies, Journalism, Vol.7(4), p. 515

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interests of the subordinate and that are not those preferred by the dominant ideology. . . Relevance is central to popular culture, for it minimizes the difference between text and life, between the aesthetic and the everyday that is so central to a process – and practice-based culture (such as the popular) rather than a text – or performance-based one (such as the bourgeois, highbrow one) . . . Popular culture is the culture of the subordinate who resent their subordination.

Popular culture, especially film, serves as a vehicle to explore these social attitudes

towards the image of journalists and provide a valuable comparative setting. It is argued

that cinematic representations are both a reflection of the existing world and rewritten,

reconstructions of what they show; creating coded examples for both cross examination

and internal exploration (Kuhn, 1985, p. 48). Roland Barthes’ study into semiotics

suggests that whilst we derive meanings from the codes used to create these seemingly

natural images, we must recognise the constructive tools of signification in their

production, (1957 cited in Kuhn, 1985, p. 5). These in turn become an interconnected

system of meaning where the images represented through film, act as a means of

communication, a set of languages, a system of signification – not just the seventh art.8

Thus film, as a popular culture text, acts as a specific means of producing and

reproducing cultural significance. By culture, meaning, the “processes which construct a

society’s way of life: its systems for producing meaning, sense, or consciousness”.9

Jensen and Jankowski have noted that much of the more recent research employing the

structuralist theoretical framework has dealt with popular culture as the primary area of

inquiry.10 Structuralist theory derives from the broader model of structuralism. As David

Silverman explains this model:

Structuralism is a model used in anthropology which aims to show how single cases relate to general social forms. Structural anthropologists view behaviour as

8 Turner, G., (2006), Film as Social Practice, 4th ed. Routledge, p. 599 Ibid., p. 5910 Jensen K. B. and Jankowski N. W. , A Handbook of Qualitative Methodologies for Mass Communication Research (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 26

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the expression of a ‘society’, which works as a ‘hidden hand’ constraining and forming human action.11

The study of the image of journalism in film is quite recent and scholars from various

fields generated a large body of research as means of interpreting the “how” and “why”

the image of on-screen journalists changed from one decade to the next. Ehrlich, Dillon,

Saltzman and Good all examined the stereotypes of journalists in film from the 20th

century and found that a variety of categories where attached to each portrayal.

“Stereotypes are an especially useful tool in the study of popular culture, because they are

direct and simple expressions of popular beliefs and values, and because they can be

found in all areas of popular expression, both ‘real’ and ‘imagined’” (Nachbar & Lause,

1992, p. 26). Mass communications scholars have been studying ‘stereotypes’ since

Walter Lippmann introduced the term to the field in Public Opinion in 1922. Lippmann

said the term applies to a “picture in our heads” which caused the shaping of the

imagination in extraordinary ways. “We do not see and then define, we define first and

then see” he said.12 In the 1950s two distinct trends are discernable in stereotyping

research. The majority of researchers continued to concentrate on the deficiencies of

stereotyping (Bogardus, 1950, Hayakama, 1950, Klineberg, 1950, 1951) while others

began to question the assumptions which underpinned this traditional position (Laviolette

and Silvert, 1951). On the other hand, Fisherman (1956) argued that stereotypes were

valid to the extent that they served to reflect the nature of interaction between stereotyped

and stereotyped groups (1956, p.60) while Vinacke suggested that stereotypes were

representations of authentic high-level conceptual relationships between individuals (i.e.

11 Silverman, D., (2005), Doing Qualitative Research, Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, 38012 Lippmann W., (1922), Public Opinion, Free Press, New York

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social groupings, 1957, p. 329). The radical implication of all this work was that

stereotypes were by nature neither irrational nor ‘bad’.13

Journalism movies point toward a key concern of cultural studies of the press: ‘the

tensions between how journalism likes to see itself and how it looks in the eyes of others’

(Zelizer, 2004, p. 178). However author Howard Good said that, “there is the danger that

stereotypes overgeneralize and prevent us from recognising reality.”14 That ‘newsmonger’

characters have persisted and played similar roles in both movies and real-life journalism

suggests that ‘journalism is something part of, rather than separate from, popular culture’

(Dahlgren, 1992, p. 18). The press’s attempts to enforce the boundaries between serious

news and pleasurable entertainment never have been wholly successful. According to

Loren Ghiglione (1990, p. 97), fictional portrayals of journalists offer a ‘fun-house mirror

reflection of reality’ that explores societal myths about journalists and produces partial

truths and exaggerations. Ghiglione in his article “The American Journalist: Fiction

versus Fact” noted that the early image of the journalist is part investigating hero, part

scoundrel and part wise guy and that this contradictory image comes has its roots in

popular culture especially fictional novels starting around 1890 and taking the American

reporter as its hero. Thomas H. Zynda (1979, p. 17) suggests that because the media

rarely present the public with a detailed understanding of the working conditions of

journalists, for most people the main source of information about journalists is found in

films. For Zynda, this situation accords Hollywood ‘a virtual monopoly on the public’s

image of the press’. The specific purpose of the studies also differ from each other, like

examining how the image of the journalist has evolved over time, (Brucker, 1980),

13 Extract from Oakes et al. (1994, pp. 2-3)14 Good H., (1989), Outcasts: The Image of Journalists in Contemporary Film Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, p. 7

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looking for reoccurring themes in journalism films (Kiste, 1986), comparing images of

journalists in different media (Langner-Burns 1989), and contrasting the image of

journalists in journalist films to non-journalist films (Bilodeau, 1994). These ‘preferred

readings’ make film a social practice and that is why in this study I would like to attempt

to provide an insight into the stereotypical imagery on screen and its changes in popular

culture, namely in film, by mapping through the transition and comparing the differences

and similarities throughout the years.

With the introduction of the sound film in the 1930s “the character … was an

exaggerated reflection of his creators, newspapermen with ambivalent feelings about

what journalism had done for them and to them” (Good, 1989, p. 9). Real life journalists

were being represented by fiction journalists such as Walter Burns in the The Front Page

(1931) who based on the editor of the Chicago Tribune (Walter Howey) (see Ghiglione,

1991, p. 3) and “sometimes the fictional journalist is the archetypical reporter that the

newsman turned-novelist would have liked to have been” (Ghiglione, 1991, p. 3). The

Front Page presents a ‘nightmare landscape’ of ‘universal corruption’ (Harvey, 1987, p.

89) whereas Ehrlich positions the play as the encapsulation of criticisms of the popular

press, with journalists portrayed as “daffy buttinskis” (p. 32). In the 1930s it was common

for journalists to move to Hollywood to make their fortune. Chicago journalists, Ben

Hecht and Charles MacArthur, turned scriptwriters, wrote the Broadway play in 1928 as a

nostalgic “old-fashioned valentine to journalism and American life.” (Ibid., p. 21). It was

shaped by the development of modern journalism in Chicago and by early novels and

plays and as the prototype of the journalism movie genre; it was debuted in a time of

controversy about tabloid news and the press’s role in society (Ibid., p. 20). About the

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fictiscious portrayal of the main character, was a Herald-Examiner reporter known as

Hildy Johnson, inspired by a real reporter named Hildy Johnson. Much to their dismay

the writers said “Hildy is of a vanishing type - the lusty, hoodlumesque half drunken

caballero that was the newspaperman of our youth…the outlaw type that journalism

schools and the new professionalism were driving into extinction”15 (Ibid., p. 30). On the

other hand MacArthur’s former Chicago Tribune editor, Walter Howey became the

play’s Walter Burns, editor of The Examiner whom they described as “that product of

thoughtless, pointless, nerve-drumming unmorality that is the Boss Journalist”, the

embodiment of every editor they had derided over drinks in Chicago taverns. 16

“Living their own rules and thumbing their noses at polite society and authority”,

reporters were considered hard-working, breaking the law when necessary, being lonely

fighters and married to their paper. Peggy, Hildy’s girlfriend warns him “It’s your chance

to have a home and be a human being-and I’m going to make you take it”. In these

“shyster films”, newspapermen, politicians and lawyers were all one and the same – hacks

on film. Newspapermen were after the scandal and would do anything to get the story,

even corrupt, but still they manage to topple corrupt city officials and save an allegedly

innocent man from execution (The Front Page, 1931). Saltzman (2002, p. 146)

notes that in movies, a journalist ‘can lie, cheat, distort, bribe, betray,

or violate any ethical code as long as the journalist exposes corruption,

solves a murder, catches a thief, or saves an innocent’. The movies

helped to change the basic disreputability of journalists into a

glamorous badge of honour. Many screenwriters were themselves

15 Hecht B. and MacArthur C., The Front Page, p. 12916 Ibid. , p. 31

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former journalists (mostly men). “Journalists were also savvy and

unpretentious, and most of all, they wrote the way people who bought

movie tickets actually talked. Snappy patter and snapped brims…the

likes of Hecht, MacArthur, Herman J. Mankiewicz (who won an Oscar for

the screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941), Samson Raphaelson (a former

New York Times reporter who became Ernest Lubitsch’s favourite

scenarist, Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin (Frank Capra’s favourite

scenarist).17 The result was a flood of pictures with newsroom settings

and/or journalists playing prominent parts: several movie versions of

The Front Page (1931).18

In “Portrayals of Journalists in Academy Award-Nominated Films, 1927-1993: A

Qualitative Analysis” (Bilodeau, 1994), Bilodeau compares the image of journalists in

two types of film: “journalist” films versus “non-journalist” films, in order to determine

how the images differ between film types and if “prevailing ideas regarding the negative

portrayal of journalists in Hollywood films are valid (Bilodeau, 1994, p. v). After

analyzing 64 Academy Award-winning films, Bilodeau found that overall journalists

17 Feeney, M., (2004), Nixon at the movies: a book about belief, University of Chicago Press, Ch. Sweet Smell of Success, p. 13518 (Rival reporters try to scoop each other while covering a fire. Bette Davis, George Brent, Roscoe Karns), Doctor X (1932), It Happened One Night and Hi, Nellie! (1934), Libeled Lady (When an heiress sues a newspaper, the editor hires a gigolo to compromise her. Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy), Theodora Goes Wild and Mr. Deed Goes to Hollywood (1936), Love Is News (1937), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1938), Foreign Correspondent (1940), His Girl Friday (1940) (The Front Page remake, which involved a sex change for reporter Hildy Johnson from Hildebrand to Hildegarde, but kept the mile-a-minute give-em-Hecht dialogue; Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell) and The Philadelphia Story (1940) (Tabloid reporters crash a society marriage;  Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart.), Penny Serenade (1941), Meet John Doe (1941) (A reporter's fraudulent story turns a tramp into  a national hero and makes him a pawn of big business; Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold) and of course, the greatest newspaper movie of them all, Citizen Kane (1941), and many more.

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tended to be portrayed positively, especially as major characters in non journalism films

(Bilodeau, 1994). The majority of the negative portrayals appeared in films of the 1930s

and in secondary characters. Bilodeau also concludes that reporters and photographers are

depicted more positively than publishers and columnists (Bilodeau, 1994). Nor is this

a new assertion. Although some (Fallows, 1997; Hanson, 1996) have

argued that contemporary movies treat the press more harshly than

the films of Hollywood’s golden era, as early as 1931 journalism

educator John Drewry (1931, p. 14) was lambasting Hollywood for

making ‘the reporter more nearly resemble a gangster than even a

moderately well-off business or professional man’. In Picture Snatcher

(1933), the characterization of the aggressive, intrusive photojournalist

of the 1920s and 1930s was perpetuated by Jimmy Cagney’s tabloid

photographer’s obnoxious behaviour. According to Brennen, Cagney’s

character in the film steals a photograph from a mentally unstable

fireman and in another scene, uses a hidden camera to photograph an

execution.19 As Joe Saltzman cites,

“Peter Warne is a cynic, with no regard for the truth; a brash opportunist who will stop at nothing to get what he wants; an amoral, alcoholic rogue, who will lie, cheat, do anything to get a scoop for his newspaper; a big-city, wisecracking shyster who talks fast, thinks fast, works fast, lives fast, often lives by his wits, and won’t take any crap from anyone. Yet, as played by actor Clark Gable, written by Robert Riskin and directed by Frank Capra in “It Happened One Night (1934), he is irresistible”20

19 Brennan, B., From Headline Shooter to Picture Snatcher The construction of photojournalists in American film, 1928–39, Temple University, 2004: Sage Publications, p. 43220 Saltzman, J., Frank Capra and the image of journalists in American film, USA Today, November, 2002

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Director Frank Capra created a somewhat iconic archetype of the American reporter

in his collection of journalism films from 1926 to 1961. Many of these archetypes were

reinvented in later decades, and with little variation, turned into radio and television who

were just as circulation-hungry and cynical as their prototypes.21 Social critic-historian

Ray Carney believes that Capra “had a profound emotional and psychological effect on

more than three generations of American audiences”. Capra had an intimate relationship

with newspapers. As a youngster he worked as a newspaper boy, his best friend, Myles

Connolly was a hard-boiled newspaper reporter for the Boston Post who later moved to

Hollywood. Together with Riskin, his primary collaborator, Capra’s individual

personality formed his films. “So, in reading Capra’s films in terms of its relation to the

American society of its time, one has to imagine both that Capra’s self-expressed his

individuality into it and this self was a product of the society he commented on.”22

As the acclaimed film critic Pauline Kael (1973) suggested, “A newspaper picture

meant a contemporary picture in an American setting…usually a melodrama with drama

and political corruption and suspense and comedy and romance” and she added “In the

silents, the heroes were often simpletons. In the talkies, the heroes were to be the men

who weren’t fooled, who were smart and learned their way around. The new heroes of the

screen were created in the image of their authors: they were fast talking newspaper

reporters.”23

However, there have been exceptions to Hollywood’s fondness for news business.

From Five Star Final (1931) to Nothing Sacred (1937) to Absence of Malice (1981) and 21 Ibid., p. 5422 Buscombe E., Politics and the Media: America on screen? Hollywood feature films as social and political evidence, pp. 25-2923 Kael P., (1984), The Citizen Kane Book, New York: Limelight Editions

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Shattered Glass (2003), journalists have worn black hats. Network (1976) and Mad City

(1997) epitomise Hollywood’s love-hate relationship with the popularity of television

news. Both Ace in the Hole (1951) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957) are a portrait of

journalistic megalomania and malice – creating their own genre: newspaper noir. There is

nothing heroic about it; the profession is presented as corrupt and evil: a sordid means to

a hateful end. The real-life journalist Walter Winchell was the inspiration for such films.

Nicknames as “the god of the gossip”, Winchell played himself in two 1937 films for the

20th Century-Fox, Wake up and Live and Love and Hisses, but his most notable movie

“appearances”, took place with Winchell nowhere to be seen – Sweet Smell of Success

being the prime example with J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) as the ambitious columnist,

referred to “being a national disgrace” by Steve, the jazz musician. Same can be said for

Charles Foster Kane, the grandest newspaper villain in movie history, in Citizen Kane

(Orson Welles). He really did try to mean well; at least for a while.24 Nearly 30 years later,

All the President’s Men made larger-than-life heroes out of reporters Woodward and

Bernstein. Appropriately enough, they were played by two of the decade's most accomplished

and popular actors – Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. The popular image of the

journalist swirls between the real and the fictional without discrimination (Saltzman).

The impact of the image of female journalists in newspaper movies was significant in

mapping the changes in the popular culture beliefs as regards to the role of women in the

working field as well in society. Nowhere were females portrayed as equal as their male

counterparts as in the journalism movie genre. The female reporter “was considered an equal

doing a man’s work, a career woman drinking and arguing toe-to-toe with any male in the

shop, and more than capable of holding her own against everyone and anything, a real tough

24 Feeney M., (2004): Nixon at the movies: a Book about Belief, University of Chicago Press p. 144

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sister, yet one who often showed her soft side and cried long and hard when the man she

loved treated her like a sister instead of a lover.” (Ghiglione & Saltzman, 2005).

Appropriately called, ‘sob sisters’, female reporters have had to always prove themselves. In

the 1930s, sob sisters underwent a form of masculinisation, adopting male-associated names

and ways of dressing designed to downplay their femininity and make them look more like

one of the boys. By the end of the film, most sob sisters, no matter how tough or how

independent they were during the film, would give up everything for marriage, children and a

life at home. Journalism historian Howard Good, sums up how female journalists felt about

the name: “Most women reporters resented this label because it reinforced the stereotype of

women as big-hearted but soft-minded, emotionally generous but intellectually sloppy.”25 The

sob sister has come a long way since 1930s and the dichotomy has nowadays shifted. Female

reporters in journalism movies have been portrayed as tough investigators as in Veronica

Guerin (2003), where she sacrificed her family life and even lost her own life to fight drug

lords. Saltzman argues that “the 21stcentury images are not all that different from the images

of the sob sisters of the past – if a woman is successful, it means she has assumed many of

the characteristics of the newsman, losing her femininity in the process”. Although I admit

that it’s still mostly a no-win situation, women’s depiction in recent journalism movies such

as State of Play (2009), whose character has the ultramodern job of political gossip

blogger and the ripely old-fashioned name of Della Frye, is not remotely as Hildy

Johnson in His Girl Friday (1940), longing to quit as she says, “I want to go someplace

where I can be a woman.” According to Ghiglione, this genre featured women journalists

as crime solvers and only to a limited extent showed them as “something other than

unfulfilled unfortunates in need of a man.” 26 Ghiglione’s conclusion regarding the sorry

25 Good H., (1998) Girl Reporter: Gender, Journalism, and the Movies, Scarecrow Press, p. 50 26 Ghiglione, L., (1990), The American Journalist: Paradox of the Press, Washington, DC: Library of Congress, p.124

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depiction of women journalists in fiction in my opinion does not hold true. Diana

Christensen (Faye Dunaway) in Network (1976) is an astute television producer, always

trying to find ways to increase audience rating whereas, Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) in

Broadcast News (1987) becomes the first woman managing editor for the national

network news, working long hours, putting news above everything else, even her

personal life – however they do it conscientiously. As Kiste (1986) noted, reporters

consider their career more important than their interpersonal relationships.

Conclusion

New input in this vast topic is hard to find, especially on new journalism films that

have been released in the 21st century. In this study I did not focus on the image of photo

journalists as such. My research will focus more on the world of the publishers and the

media-owners and how they affect the newspaper world and the work of the journalist in

yesterday and today’s world. In undertaking a comparative approach between Deadline

U.S.A. (1952) and State of Play (2009) I hope to add something new to the study of the

image of journalists in film by analysing the changes due to technological advances and

its repercussions on the newspaper world. By analysing these aspects of film it is possible

to note the repetitive characterisations that might, or might not, occur from film to film

and decade to decade. By studying the various images of the journalist, the historian can get

a better understanding of what the public of a specific era believes about its media and the

people in that media (Saltzman).

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