On Screen / Movies

How They're Played: Newspapers -- Media movies rarely are accurate

By David Burke | Thursday, March 06, 2008 | () comments

Two different generations of movies do the best job of depicting newspapers, at least according to a survey of the newsroom staff at the Quad-City Times.

The first is factual: “All the President’s Men,” the 1976 dramatization of how Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon’s administration.

The second is fictional: “The Paper,” a 1994 comedy-drama about a day in the life of a competitive New York City tabloid.

“All the President’s Men” starred Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, with Jason Robards as their editor, Ben Bradlee.

Dan Bowerman, assistant managing editor for news at the Times, said Bradlee spoke at the University of Kansas while he was a student journalist there.

“One person asked whether the movie portrayed the actual events accurately. He said generally it did, but whenever Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman dialed the phone, someone on the other end picked up,” Bowerman said. “Not quite the same as real life.”

“In my mind, when I think of Woodward, I picture Redford. Same with Bernstein (Hoffman) and especially Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards),” copy editor Mark Feeney said.

Times health reporter Deirdre Cox Baker said the movie is the reason she became a journalist.

Steven Martens, the Times Gateway Bureau chief, called “All the President’s Men” the “movie that launched a thousand journalism careers.”

“A great film, but I think a lot of people get unrealistic expectations from movies like that,” he said. “They think they can be an anonymous source just because Deep Throat did it, but, in reality, newspapers are very hesitant to use anonymous sources.”

Dave Shelles, a sports copy editor, admires the technical aspects of “President’s Men.”

“I thought ‘All the President’s Men’ was well done, too, though that’s a product of having a couple of top-flight journalists keeping the filmmakers honest. I had a boss who couldn’t get through more than an hour of ‘The Paper’ because the characters reminded her too much of people she’d worked with.”

“The Paper” received several kudos from Times staff members.

“The details in the movie are accurate to an extent, and the story is fun and compelling,” night city editor Brian Wellner said. “The acting’s great.”

Martens is also a fan of that film.

“Very funny movie,” he said. “It has characters anyone who has spent time in a newsroom would recognize — grizzled editor, crabby columnist, novice photographer, harried reporter, etc.

“There is another line when a copy editor asks aloud what the plural of some ridiculous word is, and I laughed because it is the kind of thing you only hear in a newsroom.”

Reporter and Ask the Times columnist David Heitz is also a fan of “The Paper,” “especially when Glenn Close fires the shotgun in the news meeting. Exaggerated, perhaps, but not too off the mark when it comes to personalities at newspapers.”

Also mentioned by Times staff members were “His Girl Friday” (“It’s biting and hilarious and sometimes right on the mark,” Feeney says), “Deadline USA” (a melodrama with Humphrey Bogart as the managing editor of a dying newspaper, also recommended by Feeney), “The Killing Fields” (about journalists covering the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge slaughter of Cambodians, a favorite of Wellner’s) and “Fletch” (“the greatest newspaper movie of all time,” sportswriter Eric Page says. “Chevy Chase gives a brilliant performance as an investigative reporter breaking the story of drug trafficking by local police on a California beach. If only all our careers in journalism could be so exciting.”)

A movie that irks at least two members of our staff is “Never Been Kissed,” the 1999 comedy in which Drew Barrymore plays a newspaper copy editor who goes back to high school to research a story.

“What really bothered me was how ridiculous it was in its portrayal of newspapers,” Martens said. “A major Chicago newspaper sends a copy editor into some random high school to do an expose on the popular kids? The newspaper has its own surveillance van and hidden microphones?”

“‘Never Been Kissed’ is not realistic,” said copy editor and designer Francie Williamson. “First of all, a copy editor would never be sent to write an expose on high schoolers. Also, she has an office. They don’t give copy editors offices. Only editors get offices.”

Editorial page editor Mark Ridolfi says he hates the movie cliches of the “slovenly, ethic-less reporter who goes off the record in a heartbeat,” the “media crush outside courthouses and “the use of newspapers and reporters to shortcut character development or move along plot.”

Martens said he generally objects to the way newspapers and journalists are portrayed.

“And, of course, newspaper reporters are often portrayed as being unethical, heartless, anything-for-a-headline types whose only interest is selling newspapers,” he said. “I think most of us genuinely want to tell stories.”

David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com.